How To Hit .295 On The 3rd Best Offense In Baseball And Still Be A Completely Useless Douche

How To Hit .295 On The 3rd Best Offense In Baseball And Still Be A Completely Useless Douche

Shortly before the 2008 MLB trade deadline the Detroit Tigers sent Catcher Ivan Rodriguez to the New York Yankees for Relief Pitcher Kyle Farnsworth. Idiots around baseball marveled that the Tigers would give up the first ballot hall-of-famer for an unremarkable pitcher like Farnsworth. Yes, Pudge is one of the greatest Catchers of all time and is a no-doubt first ballot hall-of-famer. However, based solely on the 2008 season, he possesses one of the most deceiving stat lines I have seen in a long time. Below is his stat line during his 2008 season with the Tigers.

GP AB H 2B 3B HR R RBI AVG

Rodriguez 82 302 89 16 3 5 33 32 .295

What may be the first thing to pop out at you, and was certainly the first thing that popped out to a majority of baseball fans and analysts alike, was the Pudge is hitting a very respectable .295 as an every day Catcher. That is certainly a luxury many teams do not have from their Catchers. However, closer examination reveals how ludicrously ineffective his .295 really is…

First, consider the team offense as a whole: At the time of the trade the Tigers were the 3^rd highest scoring offense in the major leagues with approximately 550 runs scored (only the Rangers and Cubs had scored more runs).

Now, consider Pudge’s individual ranks on the team:

-Excluding Ramon Santiago who had only 57 at bats at the time of the trade, Rodriguez ranked 4^th on the team in average (Behind Ordonez, Granderson, and Polonco)

-Pudge ranks 8^th among Tigers players in both Runs and RBI…

These are very peculiar numbers for an every day player that hits for average on a loaded offense regardless of the fact that he typically bats 7^th. An even deeper analysis is clearly needed; the following are Pudge’s situational stats so far this season:

AB H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG

Bases Empty 174 56 10 1 4 4 .322
Runners On 131 34 6 2 1 28 .260
RISP 75 18 4 2 1 26 .240
RISP w/ 2 Outs 37 8 2 0 1 12 .216
Bases Loaded 10 1 0 0 0 5 .100

These situational stats tell the real story of Pudge Rodriguez in 2008. His batting average goes down noticeably with the increase of opportunity to bring in runs. Amazingly, he has only one less RBI on the season with the bases EMPTY than he does with the bases LOADED (although there is a 164 at bat difference here that explains that as well). 15 of Pudge’s 24 extra base hits have come with the bases empty, and overall 63% of his 89 hits are with nobody on. As the stats show above, 4 of his 5 home runs on the season were solo home runs (the 5^th one was a 2-run home run).

Now lets talk about defense…

Pudge was once feared throughout the league as the stingiest catcher in the game. He has noticeably declined in this department in the last two years. In 2008 for the Tigers he had thrown out only 18 out of 50 base runners (36%). Coming into this season he had thrown out 579 of 1218 base runners in his career (47.5%).

So yes, if you don’t want to look underneath the surface then the Yankees got a 12 time gold glove Catcher that is hitting just below .300 on the season. If you do want to look behind the numbers you will see that Mr. Rodriguez is merely inflating his batting average when the situations aren’t critical, and doing a below average job stopping base runners. The Tigers should be more than happy to get rid of Pudge’s 12 million dollar salary. That’s approximately 1 million dollars for every 4.5 RBI he was on pace to hit (extrapolating his numbers for the rest of the season). As for Farnsworth, he’s ok. The Tigers certainly needed bullpen help, and while their backup Catcher, Brandon Inge, doesn’t hit for anywhere near the average Pudge did, he still manages to rack up similar RBI (31) and Run (25) totals with far fewer At Bats (181). It's not all bad though, Pudge has a lot more of this to look forward to in his future.

-The Aryan