The World Hates Adam Dunn (Updated Version)

Adam Dunn can't catch a break. Despite the fact that he annually hits 40 HRs, walks over 100 times and consistently posts an OPS near 130, he sucks. Despite everything he has accomplished, he is a terrible baseball player who doesn't try and clogs basepaths. He's slow. He doesn't steal bases. He's not clutch. He clogs the bases. For confirmation of Dunn's suckiness, look no further than Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star (as if anyone in KC knew anything about baseball).

I think it’s probably fair to say that Adam Dunn, for all his obvious talents, can be a remarkably frustrating player to watch.

The sheer enjoyment one derives by observing players is much more important than winning games. Aaron Rowand is an MVP.

He is a dreadful left fielder, a designated hitter in outfielder’s clothes.

Adam Dunn's range factor is generally below league average.

He’s slow, though it should be noted that he’s not a bad baserunner…according to the Bill James baserunner analysis he’s actually a very GOOD base runner.

Adam Dunn is so slow is that, despite being a very good baserunner who scores on hits, he isn't fast enough to be fun to watch.

He’s brutal going first to third, as you might expect, but he tends to score from second on singles and from first on doubles, he doesn’t run into many stupid outs, he doesn’t get caught stealing,

So what if he doesn't make outs and scores runs? His jogging isn't fun to watch. Believe me you, Adam Dunn is no Willy Taveras!

and he doesn’t ground into many double plays

He's also no Derrek Lee!

(though in his case that probably has little to do with his running and a lot to do with his fly ball tendencies and his many, many strikeouts.

If only Adam Dunn stopped hitting balls out of the infield (and out of the park) and slapped the shit out of grounders like Michael Bourne; imagine the possibilities.

He strikes out a ton. He hits .225 with runners in scoring position for his career (and over his career he has never hit better than .248 in those situations).

Who needs to hit the ball with runners in scoring position when you hit yourself in 40 times a year and walk 20% of the time?

He walks (797 times) about as often as he gets a hit (955 hits) — those walks might be good for value but that doesn’t make them fun to watch.

Fuck winning and valuable contributions. I want to see great plays, not great players.

There is a sense around the game that he does not especially like playing baseball; and nobody who has watched him play with any regularity would argue that he demonstrates Willie Mays’ joy.

Again, who gives a shit how little you try or how little enthusiasm you show when you rack up 40 home runs and 122 walks in the process? That's like saying "the U.S. Constitution is a piece of shit because James Madison didn't like writing as much as John Locke and other Enlightenists."

At the same time, I think it’s probably also fair to say that Willie Bloomquist, for all his obvious shortcomings,

Shortcomings like hitting one extra-base-hit (a double) all season long (192 PAs)

can be a fun player to watch, if you are a certain kind of baseball fan.

The kind of fan who enjoys singles and watching a player contribute to 101 losses with an 83 OPS+ in 2008.

He plays all the positions — he has at least 10 games at every position but pitcher and catcher — and he seems to play them all credibly.

Tony Pena Jr. struck out Pudge last year. So what?

He can run (he has stolen 71 bases in 87 attempts), and he hustles, and he has that underdog thing going for him.

He doesn't hit 40 home runs like clockwork or walk 122 times a season, but MAN is Bloomquist a hotdogger! He's got so much heart! He might even be the next David Eckstein (who, likely out of work for 2009, just penned the century's most anticipated baseball novel "Have Heart").

He has only six career homers, but, hey, one was a grand slam.

Hey, even though he really sucks, he did have one good at bat once.

No one who has ever watched Willie Bloomquist play would doubt that the guy loves ball.

No one who has ever looked at Willie "underdog" Bloomquist's career numbers would ever doubt how bad he is at baseball.

Yes, in my mind, Adam Dunn and Willie Bloomquist are almost perfect opposites.

Adam Dunn is good at baseball and Willie Bloomquist is not. End of article.

And while they are not anything close to equal baseball players, I would also say that you would not want to build a whole team of Bloomquists or Dunns.

Actually, if you were to tell me I could build a major league roster of players who would all hit 40 home runs and walk 120 times a season, I'd cum in my pants.

According to the Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis — one of my favorite toys— a whole team of 2008 Adam Dunns would average 6.67 runs per game — so that’s 1,080 runs per season. A whole team of 2008 Willie Bloomquists, meanwhile, would average 4.177 runs per game — 677 runs per season. So using the Musinator, Dunn is 400 or so runs better offensively than Bloomquist. That sounds about right to me.

According to data from 2005-2008, teams that scored 5 runs in a game had winning percentage (in those games) upward of .613, while every run scored beyond the fifth seemed to increase the team's winning percentage by about .100. By contrast teams who scored 4 runs per game won approximately .465 of the time. Considering that Adam Dunn's career OPS+ is 30% above league average and Willie Bloomquists is 26% below league average, I'd say Baseball Musings Lineup Analysis did a good job here.

Of course, it’s downright frightening to imagine how two Adam Dunns would turn the double play.

They'd make up for the error by walking and then hitting a two run blast in the bottom of the inning.

By the way, this Lineup Analysis is sort of a fun way to compare players. Take the great NL MVP race of 2008. According to the Musinator, a team of 2008 Albert Pujols would score 1,488 runs for a season. A team of 2008 Ryan Howards would score 977 runs for a season.

In other words, Adam Dunn isn't as good of a player as Albert Pujols, but he's better than Ryan Howard. You see no objections by me here.

So, by this way of thinking, Pujols is 500-plus runs better. And he’s a much better defensive player, and a much better base runner, and … I’m really not sure why this was ever really an argument.

In actuality, the 2008 NL MVP wasn't much of an argument. Idiot sportswriters like you, however, tried to fuck it up with ancient, obsolete baseball intuition.

It’s also a fun way to look at the Hall of Fame Ballot. Here, using the players career numbers, is what a complete team made up of each player would score for a season:

Mark McGwire: 1,199 runs per season.
Rickey Henderson: 953 runs per season.
Jim Rice: 948 runs per season.
Tim Raines: 918 runs per season.
Don Mattingly: 916 runs per season.
Dale Murphy: 880 runs per season.
Dave Parker: 864 runs per season.
Andre Dawson: 837 runs per season.
Alan Trammell: 812 runs per season.

For a guy who is knocking on Adam Dunn, you just showed that his career numbers, thus far, would surpass those of Shoe-in hall of famer Rickey Henderson. Granted, Dunn is in his prime and has yet to regress on the back end of his career, but he's still a really fucking good player.

Of course, that’s just offense, and it doesn’t take into account much base running,

Considering that Bill James has already proven that Adam Dunn's baserunning is well above average, who cares?

the home park or anything else. A defensive spread with McGwire or Rice is positively frightening, and I’m not sure how a lefty-throwing Rickey plays shortstop or catches. I would say that eight Trammells would have the best defensive team, though it’s worth remembering that Murphy began his career as a catcher.

Perhaps you could just visit www.baseballprospectus.com and look up these player's WARPs and we wouldn't be having this pointless arguement. It's not like researching sports to make an educated opinion is your job or anything...

I find all this to be a little bit more than an interesting side note — I think that, in many ways, Dunn and Bloomquist represent opposing philosophies about baseball.

The old good versus bad philosophy?

I think the Adam Dunn philosophy is built around what you can see, what is measurable, what is cold and hard and real.

Not to mention what is consistent and independent of luck.

With Dunn, you get a titanic power hitter who plays every day, hits long home runs (exactly 40 ever year — no more, no less), walks a lot, strikes out every three or four at bats, plays zero positions, doesn’t have much speed and doesn’t do those little things that show off his great love of the game. The Dunn Way is the Michael Corleone Way, strictly business.

Adam Dunn is a souless robot who hates baseball and would murder his own brother if given the opportunity.

The Willie Bloomquist philosophy, meanwhile, is built around passion, what is intangible, this sense that if you can get a bunch of guys who KNOW HOW to play the game, who LOVE the game, who HAVE BASEBALLS BEATING IN THEIR CHESTS,

First and foremost, this is not "the Willie Bloomquist way"; it is the David Eckstein way. David Eckstein patented "heart" in 2002 and renewed the copyright in 2006.

Secondly, as clearly evident by his career 74 OPS+, Willie Bloomquist doesn't not "know how to play the game" of baseball, no matter how much he "loves" it.

then you can do wonderful things (even if the players can’t hit worth a damn).

Actually, without getting on base or clubbing home runs, you can't do shit. No matter how fast you run.

With Bloomquist you have an astonishingly weak hitter who plays occasionally, cracked ONE EXTRA BASE HIT last year, doesn’t get on base, plays seven defensive positions,

A glaring endorsement for Willie Bloomquist's 2-year, $3 million deal.

can really run and gets his uniform so dirty that, according to his jarringly lengthy Wikipedia entry, he has over the years been called (mostly in jest/derision) Wee Willie, Ballgame, The Ignitor, Effin, WFB, The Spork, Princess Willie, Willie Boom-Boom and, by Angels announcer Rex Hudler, The Mighty Bloomquist.

I can't put my finger on why, but somehow, nicknames like Princess Willie the imposing punch of "Big Donkey."

And my point is that I believe every baseball fan, at his/her core, leans Dunn or Bloomquist.

Every baseball fan is either understands the game as enumerated by historical data and scientific reasoning or doesn't. The ones who don't are generally afraid of the the magic and sorcery that is sabremetrics and have continuously called for Bill James and Michael Lewis to be burnt at the stake.

People who believe that on-base percentage and slugging are the most significant things, that defense and speed are overrated, that what matters is what you do and not how you look doing it lean heavily Dunn.

These people are nerds who live in their mom's basements and do nothing with their lives other than crunch numbers and not play baseball.

The New York Yankees have leaned heavily Dunn: Get on base, slug the ball, don’t worry too much about catching it. And so on.

The New York Yankees, despite their inefficient payroll, also made the playoffs for 13 consecutive years.

At the same time, there are plenty of people in the game and in the stands who believe that you win by doing the little things,

Little things that don't actually contribute to winning games consistently.

by playing defense and running out ground balls and playing the game with passion every day. They lean heavily Bloomquist. The Minnesota Twins, for instance, lean Bloomquist. The Twins run and catch the ball and they have not worried too much about power or on-base percentage. This, no doubt, frustrates the heck out of a lot of Dunn-leaning Twins fans.

Actually, the Twins were carried by a phenomenal starting/relief pitching core (Slowey, Baker, Blackburn, Liriano, Nathan, Reyes, Crain) that was carried by what little offense that Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Denard Span could mustard on their own (since the rest of the team was largely too concerned with doing all the "little things" that don't win games). Willie Bloomquist-like offense didn't win the Twins 88 games last year; great pitching did.

You know who also won more games than the Twins in 2008? Those awful Yankees and their Adam Dunn-philosophy to winning.

It’s an irritating feeling when you lean heavily one way and have a team that leans heavily the other way. But I think the more irritating feeling is when you do not know which way your team leans. And that, finally, leads us to the Kansas City Royals, recent purchasers of Willie Bloomquist himself.

The Royals under Dayton Moore have TALKED about leaning Dunn. That is, Dayton has made statements that would lead you to believe he cares a whole lot about on-base percentage and power numbers.

Mark Jacobs? Mark Teahen? Ross Gload? The Royals are not leaning towards The Dunn Method, no matter what claims management has that they are looking for "on-base players" for 2009.

That’s what he says. But everything he DOES leads you to believe he leans very, very Bloomquist.

I'd add another very for good measure, actually.

Here are Dayton’s big-money signings and trades the last couple of years:

1. Jose Guillen ($12 million per): .323 on-base percentage.

2. Mike Jacobs ($3 million or so): .318 on-base percentage.

3. Coco Crisp ($5.75 million or so): .331 on-base percentage.

4. Willie Bloomquist ($1.55 million plus incentives): .324 on-base percentage.

5. Miguel Olivo ($2.7 million): .275 on-base percentage.

That’s actually quite remarkable. Look at that list again. You have five pickups totaling about $25 million per year — and you have to suspect that all five will be in next year’s lineup quite regularly. And not one guy — not ONE GUY — has even a league average on-base percentage for his career.

This is why, more or less, the Royals have sucked every year for the past 15 years. They are the Pittsburg Pirates of the AL.

Look at that list again. That’s the core of the Kansas City lineup — the leadoff hitter, the four-five hitters, the eight-nine hitters probably. And that’s a combined .314 on-base percentage.

And yet fuck Adam Dunn and his career .381 on-base percentage.

So why did Dayton sign these guys?

Good question.

1. Jose Guillen: Because he was the best right-handed “power” bat available, and he’s “a real competitor.”

2. Mike Jacobs: Because he’s got power, and “his work ethic is off the 3. Coco Crisp: Because he’s an excellent defensive center fielder, has speed and could blossom playing every day. Plus, he has “been a part of championship teams.”

4. Willie Bloomquist: Because he’s got some speed, he’s versatile and “He’s an on base guy(??), a speed-type player and a hustler.”

5. Miguel Olivo: Because he’s got a little pop in his bat and he can throw out baserunners.

The Royals believe in the Bloomquist Way.

The philosophy of losing.

And look, I am not saying that these moves will not work.

Good, because -- just like with the 2005 Nationals -- they probably won't.

They could work, I guess. There are many ways to win baseball games. Guillen could have one more good season left in him. Jacbos could pop 30 homers. Crisp could revert back to his Cleveland days and could win a Gold Glove in Kansas City’s big center field. Bloomquist could, um, … well, he could be used as a super utility player. Olivo could … well, anyway.

Yes, if every player on the team were to have to career highs in every statistical category, you could probably win some games.

The Royals also spent $4.25 million per year on Kyle Farnsworth and $1.9 million on Horacio Ramirez.

Spent or overspent?

Man, the Royals threw around a lot of money to a lot of players who did not have good years in 2008. Maybe it will work.

But probably not.

They do have a lot of guys in the clubhouse who love the game.

But suck at playing it.

I personally would have taken that money and signed Adam Dunn and a couple of other guys who may not like baseball a whole lot but at least get on base and get batters out.

Hey, me too!

It's a different philosophy.

The philosophy of winning.