Sunday, August 8, 2010

Carlos Lee: Worst Everyday Player in baseball

The sad thing is that Pedro Feliz might have won this award at some point in the season. However, Joe Posnanski's blog post settles a bet for two guys wondering about the worst everyday player in baseball.

The criteria:
(1) Poor performance.
(2) Indications that the performance will never again improve and the team is trapped.
(3) All-around awfulness — just being subpar at one thing (like Carlos Quentin’s outfield defense) is not enough.


The winner?
This wasn’t too hard to predict (except, apparently, by the Houston Astros who gave Lee a six-year, $100 million contract before the 2007 season when he was turning 31).

It wasn’t hard to predict because Lee was, at his best, a one-dimensional player. He was a terrible base runner — he has scored minus-28, minus-15, minus-36 and, this year, minus-15 bases in his Houston years. He was a below average outfielder. He never did walk enough to sustain his on-base percentage. What Carlos Lee could do was swat 30 or so homers a year with good enough batting averages to put up 100-plus RBIs a year. Well, it’s no secret that players like that do not age well.

And Lee, after putting up a very good offensive year in 2008, and a good one in 2009 is now hitting .245/.292/.398. He’s 34 years old. And the Astros still have two years and $37 million left on his contract. It just doesn’t figure to get any better from here.


/Loading gun.