There are many on this blog and other blogs as well as members of the mainstream media who have been down on Andruw Jones lately. And with the way he's been playing it's not hard to see why. But now we get this excerpt from a new book by Jayson Stark, who writes over at the world leader, about how he believes that Andruw Jones is the "most overrated center fielder of all time." I guess I should have asked Scott Boras to have a seat before he read that, because it is the exact opposite of what the super-agent will be claiming as he trots Jones from city to city extolling the virtues of what at that time will likely be 10 straight gold gloves and 375 career homeruns. Mister Stark would tell GMs to put down the pen and close the checkbook because when it comes to Andruw's defense he has this to say:
He peaked at 493 putouts in 1999. He was still slurping up 461 in 2001. But by 2005 he was down to 365. In 2006 he was at 377. I tried looking at his total chances per game. Still way down. We're talking about 100 or so balls a year he wasn't getting to that he used to. A hundred.
I thought: that can't be right. A friend suggested maybe it was a function of the Braves' pitching staff. Maybe they were just throwing fewer fly balls than they used to. Great point. So I checked. Fortunately, there's a stat that measures that, too -- zone rating (the percentage of balls fielded by a player in his typical zone).
So I called up the 2006 zone rating of all qualifying major league center fielders on ESPN.com. Guess who was last on the list? Yessir, Andruw. He also finished last in 2004. And fifth from the bottom in 2005. I kept checking. As recently as 2001, he led his league in zone rating.
According to Stark, at one time Jones really WAS all he was cracked up to be, but now just five years on he's the MOST overrated. "Most overrated" is a bit harsh. Jones may be slowing a bit, as has Griffey, as did Mays, as have many others, but "most overrated!" His defense was the one part of his game we Braves fans thought was a constant. Perhaps Stark is right that watching him day in and day out one doesn't get a good feel for the overall picture.
The other part of Andruw's game that Braves fans have been moaning about this year is his offense. This is the other big thing which Stark points to trying to support his most overrated claim. I probably agree with this a bit more:
He smoked 51 home runs in 2005, a very seductive number. But I checked every 50-homer season in baseball history. Again, I had a tough time digesting what I found. Jones had the lowest batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, and park-adjusted OPS-plus that any player has ever had in a 50-homer season. He reached base fewer times than any 50-homer man ever. And if you take in the bigger picture, with Bill James's incisive runs-created stat, Andruw "created" fewer runs than any 50-homer man ever had. In fact, he created fewer runs that year with his 51-homer season than three hitters who didn't even have a 20-homer season -- Brian Roberts, Derek Jeter, and Brian Giles.
Wow! Just heaping on the hate for AJ. But Stark is looking at Jones through an outsider's viewpoint and from a statistical viewpoint. This all begs the question, "have we really been missing the big picture about Andruw Jones?" This season notwithstanding most Braves' fans and people in baseball have held Jones up to the microscope and for the most part he's held up, but has he been fooling us all along? Stark brings up the point that our perception of Jones is one that comes from a younger, thinner, faster, more agile Andruw, and that the thick, powerful, all-or-nothing-swinging Andruw we see today is not really the same player.
Stark points to 2001 as the last great defensive season for AJ. We can look at something else that happened around that time as another indicator of Andruw's decline - he stopped stealing bases. He was never a great base stealer, but at least he tried and it was a part of his game. Since 2001 Andruw has not stolen more than 8 bases in any season - this after stealing 20 or more for four straight years from 97 to 2000. Was Andruw changing his game?
Even more evidence can be found in 2001. Up until that season, AJ had averaged 110 strikeouts per full season; only once whiffing more than 107 times. In 2001 he racked up 142 strikeouts, and ever since then he has averaged 131 Ks per year - only once dipping below 125 Ks in a season.
So what do we take away from all of this? Is Andruw Jones the "most overrated" center fielder in baseball history? No, he's not. He may be a bit overrated now, both offensively and defensively. Has he lost a step or two? Probably, most players do with age. But for those of us who watch the Braves day after day Andruw still makes the impossible play look routine, and until this year has been a fairly consistent force in the middle of the Braves offence.
Maybe I can't see it.
Maybe I don't want to admit it. After all, we did watch Andruw grow up with the Braves.
Maybe he really is overrated, or the most overrated. Or maybe he'll get hot all of a sudden and make everyone forget all these statistical failings.