Dodgers Snub Brian Barton
The Dodgers released Brian Barton. Meanwhile, Garret Anderson will evidently make the opening day roster. There’s something amusing about these two statements.
Anderson is a veteran. He’s fought in numerous baseballing wars endured in the Los Angeles market for years upon years. Anderson’s career has become a parody of itself. In the past he was always the choice for most underrated player, and now he’s just bad and overrated. Since 2005 Anderson has been an above average hitter once and above average fielder once. His combined WAR during that time is 2.8, but he’s been paid in excess of $40M to be an annually below average player. He figures to back-up the outfield and first base positions while pinch hitting as well.
Barton is considerably younger than Anderson, right-handed – which may ultimately be his downfall – and also an outfielder. His Major League sample size is too small to draw conclusions from and in 640 Triple-A plate appearances, his OPS is only .720, although that underrates Barton, who walks more than the usual minor leaguer. He’s still cheap, offers more upside, and he’s fast. If those reasons aren’t enough to secure Barton a roster spot over Anderson, then so be it. However, the Dodgers will regret this maneuver if the National League institutes a rule surrounding aerodynamics knowledge and scoring runs.
Oh yes, Barton has knowledge of aerodynamics, and as he shared in this interview a few years back, he grew up dreaming of being an astronaut, and how the pursuit of those dreams affected his status as a baseball player:
BB: When I was younger I had dreams. I wanted to be an astronaut growing up. As I got older and older, I really just wanted to be a baseball player. Everything else at that point became secondary. This is my dream and what I’ve spent pretty much all my life doing. And then from the outside world it was almost taken from me because a lot of people–the majority I didn’t even know–felt like they knew what I wanted out of life. That was one of the main things that hurt, especially when draft day came up. A lot of people who never saw me play, a lot of people I’ve never even talked to in my life now had what I saw as a pretty glaring role in determining my future.
That kind of bothers me a little bit because I think any time you make a decision on me you should at least come talk to me–know what’s going on in my mind before you just assume things.
As an aside: Human beings generally classify people based on three physical attributes. Those are: Shape, size, and color. For the life of me, I can’t shake the idea that somewhere, in some manila folder on some desktop is a scouting report that compares Barton to another black outfielder with speed and smarts; that outfielder being the scholarly Fernando Perez.
There is a case to be made here that Barton is a better player at this point in time. He is easily a superior defender and baserunner, and the average wOBA of his CHONE and ZiPS projections is .307. Anderson’s CHONE/ZiPS average is roughly .314. That’s about a run difference over 200 plate appearances, which disintegrates once the aforementioned defensive and baserunning are taken into account.
And hey, even if you don’t buy into the argument that Barton could be a Dodger, he should definitely be on Cistulli’s All Joy Team, right?
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Fernando Perez isn’t black
He’s just as dark as I am, we’re both morenos.
Technically, neither was Vic Power.
yeah he was. Vic Power was a black Puerto Rican.
Power did not consider himself black; he considered himself Puerto Rican. “Black” was a label that was stuck on him by because he was so dark-skinned.
He tried to resist the label, and when he was in the minor leagues in the south he was probably he didn’t get lynched because he refused to act like a black was supposed. In the end, he acquiesced.
I’d point at this as evidence to those people who think the Dodgers should have an ‘organizational ranking’ higher than that of the Mariners, under the ‘better front office heading’.
I’d do that, except for the Garko / Sweeney issue. So, uh, yeah.
You guys are jerks. I can’t understand how people that had one of the worst GMs in baseball can just get a good one and all the sudden act all holier than though. I don’t like his bench construction either, but a bad bench doesn’t take away from our young core which is unmatchable throughout baseball.
Kemp, Ethier, Loney, Martin, Broxton, Kershaw, Billingsley.
better than
Gut, Saunders, Lopez, Moore, Aardsma, Felix, Roland Smith.
and it isn’t close.
Also don’t bring up prospects because the Dodgers have a better system than the Ms and Ned isn’t doing the drafting Logan White is, so the Dodgers system will continue to be better than the M’s.
On average the Dodger core players are 25 years old, they reached two straight NLCS, so how is it then that they wont have a highly successful 2010-15 when their players will be in their prime?
It’s all because of the divorce, and it’s BS because it’s making unsupported assumptions.
it’s because Jack Z is smarter than Ned Coletti, get over it.
Color and race are not the same. He is black, just like Adrian Beltre is black.
His comparison is clearly Will Venable of Princeton.
A poor man’s Doug Glanville.
I assume there’s going to be articles over analyzing every other teams choice of fifth outfielder.
Though if the Dodgers lose the division by .2 games, I’ll know exactly who to blame.
Yeah, but Anderson’s intangibles are through the roof. Leadership! Toughness! Veteran presence!
Interestingly, both of these guys were with Atlanta last year. One of them was the starting left fielder, so any statements I want to make about the competence of Atlanta’s front office can only defend that by saying “Well, at least he wasn’t Brian Giles.”
The Nationals recently said they would use Willy Taveras in a platoon in RF with Willie Harris.
Please, please, please sign Barton before Taveras can do any more damage.
As the fifth OF, GA’s job with the Dodgers is to be a lefty PH, and he will be the only left-hand bat on the bench. He’s not going to play enough defense to care all that much how poor he is at it. By far GA’s most important stats are going to be the hitting ones, which might improve when he’s not over played as he was in Atlanta.
As a fellow aerospace engineer, I was really rooting for Brian Barton, but to me the biggest surprise is that he wasn’t kept in AAA for org depth, esp. given that they released Jason Repko also.
The real Dodger fifth OF argument is really GA vs. the left-hand hitting Xavier Paul, whose projected wOBAs range from .299 to .341, and who is a plus OF defender in the corners.
I get if they want Garret’s “veteran presence” over Barton’s inexperience.
But why release the guy? Couldn’t they stash him in AAA for depth?
I met Fernando Perez when he drove several hours from Connecticut in a rainstorm to attend a SABR meeting in Boston. I was impressed by his talented writing, his wit, and his charm. Count me among his fans.