I can’t believe how many times people get conned into believing something “magical” is happening to a fading hitter when they look at his OPS and see it’s better than the past few years…when it turns out the guy either is walked because he can’t pull the trigger on a mistake pitch and the pitcher tries too hard to get him to swing at a pitch outside the K zone, or he actually is IBB’d more often, like Bonds (of course, THAT won’t happen to Sexson, not while he’s still in the AL).

————————

Adam S said (in part):

Either way, the idea that he’d be a defensive replacement is laughable.

Yankee fans on two blogs I read are waxing poetic about his ability to throw from 1B to 2B to get the force on an A’s baserunner. Wooo-woo! I know Giambi was bad, but really, how long before they realize Richie ain’t that good? (he fooled ‘em last night by successfully fielding throws from all 3 other infielders)

A career average number of any stat you can name inherently makes a declining player look better because it weights their “pre-suck” seasons equally with their “post-suck” seasons, when clearly it’s the latter that are more relevant to determining what their future performance might be.

Riiiight, because the notoriously bullying and quick-to-anger fans in Seattle arbitrarily decided to start booing Richie while he was still putting up good numbers, and that caused him so much mental anguish he lost the ability to hit.

Meanwhile, those of us in the real world who actually watched the games last year noticed he came out of Spring Training sucking (.145/.244/.606 April) and he continued to suck for most of the season before one boo was heard (though I think it was his July that offered a roost for the boo-birds: .165/.305/.584). He was given four months to stink up the place, which is 3.5 more than he’d get in NY.

People didn’t just wake up one day and decide to start booing Sexson. They started booing him because he sucked.

Two possibilities
1) Sexson is done and the Yankees waste 50-100 AB over the next two months confirming that his “splits” are just random variance.
2) Sexson has dropped off, but he’s still an effective part time player playing mainly against lefties and he’s a great pickup for $200K.

Either way, the idea that he’d be a defensive replacement is laughable.

How does that not equate to him being done as an everyday player, again?

He may have some very small value as a platoon bat against lefties, so for the amount they’re paying he’s not a bad pickup for the Yankees; but he’s no Frank Thomas.

But, his CAREER OPS is .852.

His ROAD OPS is *ABOVE* that number in 3 of 4 seasons with the Ms. The pattern is NOT random.

The pattern is steady, increasing decline AT HOME, while the pattern for the road is 3 pretty decent years around expectation and 1 outlier.

Of course, if you had responded by showing his split versus lefties and rights in 2008 …

vs RHP: .178/.281/.304/.584
vs LHP: .344/.423/.623/1054

I could have easily accepted the possibility that he has lost his ability to hit righties, (his career split is .842 vs RHP and .879 vs LHP).

Maybe it was just a fluke that he happened to stumble upon hittable lefties exclusively on the road. But, he had less than half as many PAs against lefties as he did on the road – so I’m sticking with the larger data sample as my tie-breaker.

However, given that he was hitting 1045 against lefties THIS SEASON, and was hitting .875 away from Safeco this season, I’m thinking the Yankees may have just gotten a better bargain than Oakland did when they snarfed up the discarded Frank Thomas.

Any reason for us to think the fluky-looking split in 2008 isn’t actually just a fluky split?

It’s hard for me to accept MENTAL as an explanation when RANDOM will do quite nicely.