01-09-08 - Enough With The Pierre Bashing Already

OK, where should I start?  We need to establish that the reason the Dodgers didn’t win the NL West Division Title or the NL Pennant or for that matter, The World Series, was Juan Pierre’s fault.  Let’s do some detective work, spin a few stats and show how Juan Pierre is a joke in CF and it was his fault we lost.  Right?  Right?  Can I get an “Amen”, Brother?   Shut Up, Already!   This we know:

• Juan Pierre has a weak arm;
• Juan Pierre takes some bad angles on flyballs
• Juan Pierre has a OB% lower than he should; and
• Juan Pierre is not the reason we didn’t win!

For the record, I have stated that we should trade Juan Pierre, but it is not because I don’t like him.  It’s because I think we just need more power in LF and Andre Ethier supplies that.  So does Delwyn Young, for that matter.  But, I have grown weary of the “Pierre Bashing” and subsequent bashing of Ned Colletti for allegedly signing Pierre to the “worst contact in the history of baseball.”  Of course, the Angels former GM was cool for signing Gary Matthews to a larger contract.  I’m not going to debate the signing of Matthews, but I’m glad we got Pierre rather than Sarges’ ‘roided-up kid!   Back to the point:  I am sick of hearing about how bad Pierre is.  I am sick of hearing how bad a contract Ned gave him and I am sick of the stat geeks trying to quantify every player with numbers.  I’ll go deeper about this in a future article, but numbers lie.  Numbers don’t tell the Read the rest of this entry »