Commenter "Anonymous" noted that it wasn't fair to simply say Werth was better than average in the NL. That includes a lot of less offensive minded positions. I thought his comment made sense and took a look at him in comparison to other NL RFs this year (with a number of ABs to get roughly one RF per team)
It's not good. He's 11th. Kind of fitting a space between the good players and the bad ones.
This didn't make sense to me considering he's not doing that much worse than his 2007-2009 years where he was 4th-6th in LF. If the bats are slumping why aren't the NL RF bats slumping? If we look at the MLB RFs we see Werth right in the middle, which is about what I'd expect. A drop of a couple spots from his better days. Like I said, a hot week from being back to where he should be. Are we seeing a RF renaissance in the NL? Maybe. Stanton and Bruce are two impressive bats. Seth Smith and John Jay are finally getting some time to hit. But there's something else that's pretty crazy going on.
Out of the 10 NL RFs ahead of Werth in OPS as of today, 8 are posting career best years in that stat. The other two Justin Upton and Carlos Beltran, are having their second best years so far.
That's pretty crazy right?
(I'm not saying Nats fans can't complain about Werth mouthing off. He shouldn't have. Not saying you can't say you expect more from him. You should. But all in all he is not terribly failing the team and him being slightly disappointing so far should be like 6th or 7th on Nats fans lists of things to complain about)
Nature abhors a vacuum, so I like to contribute when others eschew comment.
ReplyDeleteI had thought that Ryan Zimmerman emerged when Adam Dunn was around to give him some protection in the lineup. When Werth was acquired, I wondered at first if Werth would pick up that role, but my theory was that Zimmerman would give more help to Werth than Werth to Zimmerman. (My gut was that Werth may have benefited from having Phillies on base in front of him.) It will be interesting to see how Werth fares when Zimmerman returns. Currently, Werth may not be hitting well, but his WPA is still positive.
P.S. This is off topic, but WAMU's Morning Edition reported today that an increasing number of young adults in Montgomery County are living in their parents' home. I am wondering what percentage of those persons are blogging about baseball in their parents' basement?
I should name my dog vacuum then. Hey yo!
ReplyDeleteI expect Werth to hit better in general the Zimm push could make it pretty special. I kind of wish Zimm was coming back right now because things are coming together. In another 2-3 weeks Morse or Nix might cool off or someone else might get injured.
You know you just helped me solve something - the media east coast bias is obviously because more houses in the NE have basements. You can't blog from your mother's breakfast nook