Bored before work today, I was browsing through Yahoo! Sports' "Ultimate Free-Agent Tracker." Among the many Free Agent "summaries for dummies," I came across this strange ranking:
"31) Jason Giambi, DH: After years as a bust, he could prove a power-hitting bargain to a team in need of a designated hitter."
If you (or Jeff Passan, for that matter) were to in fact click the given link, you would find the following batting statistics for Jason Giambi as a Yankee:
2002: 1.034 OPS (172 OPS+), 41 HR, 109 BB, 689 PA
2003: .939 OPS (148 OPS+), 41 HR, 129 BB, 690 PA
2004: .721 OPS (90 OPS+), 12 HR, 47 BB, 322 PA
2005: .975 OPS (161 OPS+), 32 HR, 108 BB, 545 PA
2006: .971 OPS (148 OPS+), 37 HR, 110 BB's, 579 PA
2007: .789 OPS (108 OPS+), 14 HR, 40 BB, 303 PA
2008: .875 OPS (128 OPS+), 32 HR, 76 BB, 565 PA
Putting his two injured half seasons (2004, 2007) aside, Jason Giambi played five "full" (545+ PA's) seasons for the Yankees, only OPS-ing below .930 once (last year, with a league-worst .875 OPS). In fact, if you were to take out Giambi's terrible first month start from his final season stats in 2008, in his worse full season with the Yankees, Giambi would have put up a horrible .904 OPS (485 PA). If you were to even combine Giambi's two injured half-seasons into a single full season and expect "production" from him, he still would have had an OPS+ of 101, 1% better than the MLB average, in his worse "full season" as a Yankee.
So please, Jeff Passan, explain to me how a guy who hit an average of 35 HR's a season (1 less than Mark Teixeira's career season average), walked 100+ times a season and OPS-ed .961 when healthy (.926 overall) for the Yankees was a "bust." Are you trying to say that Giambi wasn't as good at ages 30-37 as he was when he was 26-29 and on steroids? Does that even count as an argument?
EDIT 1: I was looking over Giambi's stats and noticed his seven year Batting Average for the Yankees was approximately .250. Perhaps Passan, who clearly doesn't understand the important statistics in baseball, thought that batting .250 (despite a .400+ OBP) makes one "bad." But then I remembered this article Jeff Passan wrote a few months ago. Surely Passan cannot think that Giambi is a "bust" because of his .250 BA because he was just raving about Ryan Howard, who hit .250 (and had an OPS only 5 points higher than Giambi's 2008 OPS) last year. So what in the fuck is Jeff Passan talking about???
EDIT 2: Come to think of it, you know who else has a career OPS of .926 or higher? Only 40-other players. Hank Aaron and Frank Robinson had career OPS's of .926. In fact, Giambi's career OPS ranks top 30 in MLB history, ahead of Willie Mays, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Edgar Martinez, David Ortiz, Carlos Delgado and Albert Belle. Giambi basically has the same career OPS as Ty "Wife Beater" Cobb. Pretty fucking exclusive company, if you ask me.
At this point, I demand an apology for the time you made me waste thinking about this all day.
While I agree with your reasoning and for sure are confused why people are shitting on Giambi, there's a few things you need to consider which you did not for sake of being funny/sarcastic
ReplyDelete1) You can not combine a player's two injury riddled seasons and claim it as one. The player was injured and only got half of the PA's that a player should. You can say, during an injury riddled season Giambi played well, but you can't just combine them. Being injured like, what was it, two of the past 5/6 years is very significant. Especially considering how old Giambi is. As a GM of a team, you need to take age into consideration when you're offering him a contract
2) Partially related to the last point. Giambi is old. While his numbers might have been good in the past (and they clearly were), you can't for sure say (ever, for any player) what his numbers will be in the future and his numbers really might decline, and fast, considering his age. You can show how good he WAS, but with his age, he might deserve to drop to 31 because it's not a bad assumption to say his output will not be as good as it once was
3) You're using my "What If" logic when talking about Giambi's last season. Sure, overall it was darn good, but you can't just exclude just how shitty he was and only look at how good he was. The fact remains he only had a .875 OPS in 2008. You HAVE to include the huge dump he took in his first month along with his greatness for the rest of the year because that's what the player did.
With all that being said, yes, it was extremely retarded for Jeff Passan to say "after years of being a bust" because Giambi clearly was not. People had this perception of him and what they think he should of done because of what he did in his past and because he is a New York Yankee so they THINK he was a bust, but as you so accurately pointed out he was not.
Now i don't know exactly who was 1-30 but Giambi might legit deserve to be 31 because of his age and he probably wont play any defense, and it is not unreasonable to think his numbers won't decline. But he certainly was a damn good player while playing in the Bronx
i just need to correct jeff's names of the radio personalities.
ReplyDeleteit's mac(for McNeil) jurko and harry. as well as boers and bernstein
I think this blog is consuming my life. at least im wildly entertaining
ReplyDeleteLike I said, i did not know who exactly was in front of Giambi to warrant him being number 31 but you're right, some people ranked ahead of him are really bullshit.
ReplyDeleteBut in some defense of Giambi's position (granted not much), it's unrealistic to assume that people like Abreu will be better than Giambi because of age
But yes, Jeff Passan is a retard