A Dose of Ivy

Good 'ole Andy Dolan focuses today's Daily Dose over at Desipio on something written by this sheet. He raps me for suggesting that Patterson's 2003 wasn't as good as the numbers state.

What? Never head of the score not truly reflecting the game?

Let's look at the O Korey gave his team in 2003.

AVG  .298 

OBP  .329

SLG  .511

OPS  .839

HR     13

RBI    55

SB  16/21

Looks good on the surface. And only in half a season.

But when you break it down by month, the numbers aren’t so good. His May was huge. April was pedestrian. Ok, it was worse. More strikeouts than hits. Average of .277, OPS of 789. June also sucked. On the plus, two more hits than strikeouts, but his average was under .270 and his OPS fell to .771.

In short, inconsistent. Really mediocre hidden by a huge May.

Ah, but his defense? Zone rating in the middle of the pack. Rage factor of under 2 which would make him the worst regular center fielder in the league (Lofton’s was 0.5 better – which is huge). Doubling his assists would place him in the bottom third of starting center fielders.

To summarize: Terrible.

But here’s the real gist of what I wrote. There are a lot of players that did better in the minors who weren’t given as long of a shot as Korey. And there are really 2 reasons why Korey keeps getting sent out to guard the yellow 400 sign: He has a big bonus and he has a physique. He gets a lot of looks for the same reason John Thierry played for 9 years and 4 teams. He looks like he can play.

Well, Mr. Dolan. He can’t. He won’t. And he’s a bigger problem than short stop since A Gonz leaves as a free agent in 4 months. Korey heads to arbitration after the year. The Cubs think they can keep him on the cheap for another 3 years. Here I quote the greatest losing baseball manager of all time.

“AAUUGGGHHH!!!!!” - Charlie Brown