What About Paginski?

Here's an interesting thought experiment from the Orioles Blog Camden Crazies (via BBTF):

This idea came up when discussing the possibility of the Yankees signing Matt Holliday on Twitter:

Doesn’t make sense for NY to spend that money on him now. The could put me in LF and still maybe make the playoffs.

Which begs the question, just how many wins could I cost a team if I played a full season? Any guesses, before I try to figure it out?

Seems easy enough to figure out. Same procedure would be used as when evaluating any other player. Take a guess, and then let’s work it out.

First off, the stipulation was that I would get 600 plate appearances in left-field, but I think it’s the case that if I had to play in the field all the time I wouldn’t actually make it to 600 PA. So instead, I’ll go easy on myself and just DH for the season.

The author, Daniel Moroz, is very conservative in projecting his offensive contributions, giving himself a .050/.100/.050 line for the season. Much of that comes from the assumption that if you just kept your bat on your shoulder, you'd work the occasional walk.

Click through to find out just how many runs and wins below replacement a .150 OPS is and to see whether or not the Yankees could hypothetically make the playoffs with him at DH.

It also reminds me of the following classic New York State Lottery commercial:



"Paginski" in the commercial was only batting .027 and he was also costing him team lots of runs with his awful defense at third base, meaning the Designated (Anti-)Hitter Moroz probably isn't the worst player in imaginary baseball history.

The moral of the story is that even the worst major leaguers are several orders of magnitude better than the average person watching from the stands or their couch at home. Although Joe Schmo would probably walk more than Bengie Molina, Yuniesky Bentancourt or Jeff Francoeur.

Yesterday

(Benjamin Molina with Yadier pictured above)

Peter Abraham has a story about the passing of Jose Molina's father in LoHud this morning.

Despite having three sons in the major leagues, Benjamin Molina continued to work at a factory on an assembly line. Only after his death did the brothers learn that he intended to retire in December to spend more time with their mother.

"He used to say he worked to get the health insurance for my mom," Molina said. "We told him we would take care of that, but he loved to work. I could tell you hours and hours of stories like that. There was nothing bad about him."

There is no way a father can have three sons at the same position in the major leagues without knowing a whole lot about baseball, teaching and hard work.

I lost my dad a while back and although I never played baseball, my dad was a lot like Mr. Molina. When I was six years old he started taking me to the driving range and eventually let me play in from the 150 yard markers. I owe a lot of my golf skills to the fact that my dad wasn't afraid to push me to try harder.

He'd get up at 5AM during the week and bust his ass at SOFCO during the day but would usually stop by The Edison Club on the way home to pound some balls and could always be found at sunset on the putting green.

You have to hang in 'til the end, but this song will hit home if you've lost your father.