As I inch closer to the land of the living, you can check out my thoughts on how the AL East is shaping up over at Rich Lederer and Bryan Smith’s Baseball Analysts.
Rich and Bryan are doing what they call “two-on-two” conversations to preview each division, pitting two bloggers covering two different teams in the division “against” the site’s charming hosts in a roundtable discussion that covers every team in the division (the Toaster’s own, Alex “Cub Town” Ciepley was part of the NL Central discussion, as was Jon “Dodger Thoughts” Weisman for the NL West).
In the AL East edition, Patrick “Sully” Sullivan from The House that Dewey Built (a frequent Bronx Banter commenter) and I go head-to-head (and two-on-two) with Rich and Bryan. Enjoy!
1. Which is more important in evaluating Ruben Sierra -- OBP or batting average with RISP? On Monday's TV broadcast, it was mentioned that Sierra had batted a bit over .300 with RISP and driven in a whole bunch of runs. Evidently Joe Torre gives that more weight than Sierra's mediocre OBP. Cliff evidently disagrees. Who's right?
2. Well, if Sierra is used primarily as a pinch hitter with runners in scoring position, then I would say his RISP is more important than this OBP. However, the question is whether Sierra's .300+ RISP is repeatable. He only had 79 AB last year in such situations. Take away four hits and he's right back to his batting average for the season in all situations.
I think his three-year results with RISP (79-for-311, .254) are more indicative of what he's likely to do this year. The bottom line is that Sierra is no more than just a very average hitter. Ruben can no longer play defense so he's confined to being a pinch hitter who is perhaps useful against right-handers but is a liability vs. lefties.