Another thing people keep forgetting is that Gonzo was our shortstop all of last year, when we were the World Champions !! If he is such a liability, then how'd we win it all?? And I dont' want to hear any crap about the other players having to pick him up all the time..

 

His numbers last year were very solid.... And the picture in AGonzalez11's sig says it all.... I remember a certain homerun off of Jeff Weaver...

 

KEEP AGON !!!!

The Swede.... any reply?

Another thing people keep forgetting is that Gonzo was our shortstop all of last year, when we were the World Champions !! If he is such a liability, then how'd we win it all?? And I dont' want to hear any crap about the other players having to pick him up all the time..514356[/snapback]

 

Well, Enc was our starting RFer last year, and Mordi ou top pinch-runner so it must work this season...

And now that Miggy is back in left field he can get back to playing that same great (read: below league-average) defense he did last year...

And if only we had Pudge, the greatest player of all time who never made an out and threw out every baserunner from here to Iowa...

 

Let's save the knocks on Choi, part of the reason Alex has such high RBI totals is because Choi was on base 38.8% of the time. For a 8th-hole hitter OBP means little, however Alex' command the strike zone, or lack of, is still very troubling.

Another thing people keep forgetting is that Gonzo was our shortstop all of last year, when we were the World Champions !! If he is such a liability, then how'd we win it all?? And I dont' want to hear any crap about the other players having to pick him up all the time..514356[/snapback]

 

Well, Enc was our starting RFer last year, and Mordi ou top pinch-runner so it must work this season...

And now that Miggy is back in left field he can get back to playing that same great (read: below league-average) defense he did last year...

And if only we had Pudge, the greatest player of all time who never made an out and threw out every baserunner from here to Iowa...

 

 

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Why are you knocking our 2003 World Champs?? I thought you were being sincere there for a second. It worked last year and it'll work again this year.

The reason we should trade Alex Gonzalez besides that he makes $4 million is that he is statistically the second worst hitter in baseball. he has a .272 on base percentage, which is up about 12 points from the .260 he was at a week ago (when he was statistically the single worst hitter in baseball). It is devastating to a lineup when a player is getting out 74% and now 73% of the time. He is virtually an automatic out. And in response to the quote about how he would be a .270 hitter without the first month, you could also look at it that he would be a .200 or worse hitter without that stretch against interleague play. Alex Gonzalez goes into such long, deep, and pronounced slumps so often that he cripples a lineup. His week or two of hitting does not outweigh the 5 weeks he will hit .150. Couple that with Encarnacion's .290 OBP (meaning he gets out 71% of his plate appearances) and put a pitcher behind the two, and Marlins pretty much give away 9 outs or three innings a game. That means that we only have a chance to really score 6 out of 9 innings. A player cannot get out at that rate without hurting his team.

 

The Marlins could easily (and more cheaply) replace Alex with a guy who is close if not as good as him in the field and, at the same time, not have this guy devastate the team offensively. Perhaps Josh Wilson is that man.

 

It is clear that I am not an Agon fan. In fact, I boo him and Encarnacion at most games. However, I do think that Agon has potential. Unlike Encarnacion, his bat speed and hand-eye coordination are not his problem. He just has possibly the worst control of the strike zone and plate discipline in the league. I read one account, which said he was a reactive hitter. Meaning he pretty much swings at anything regardless of the count or situation. He doesn't look to drive the ball in hitter's counts or foul off pitches in hitter's counts. he just swings, reacts, to every pitch and whatever happens happens. the point of this is that he can be a good hitter if he learns not to be a reactive hitter and learns pitch selection. However, it is debateable if any player, especially him, could learn that this late in a career in the majors.

 

The Marlins would be much better off moving Gonzalez and Encarnacion. but that is why the marlins should trade him. Plus for some strange reason i don't understand, people think he is good, so maybe we can get some good prospects for him.

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Just to show you how statistics can be used in a misleading way and always to provide unrealistic evidence of reality. Did you know that Alex Gonzalez is the leader in RBIs and HRs by shorstops in the NL with 61 and 17 respectively? He is also #5 MLB-wide in RBIs and #3 in HRs. So much for an automatic out...

 

And why people think he is good? He is a 2nd best defensive SS in the NL with a 979 PCT and # 5 MLB-wide. His defense has saved a lot of games. No, the Marlins will not get rid of him. :thumbup

Well, Enc was our starting RFer last year, and Mordi ou top pinch-runner so it must work this season...

And now that Miggy is back in left field he can get back to playing that same great (read: below league-average) defense he did last year...

And if only we had Pudge, the greatest player of all time who never made an out and threw out every baserunner from here to Iowa...

 

 

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Why are you knocking our 2003 World Champs?? I thought you were being sincere there for a second. It worked last year and it'll work again this year.

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Because I'm sick and tired of everyone thinking last year's team was perfect.

 

I also hate how people attribute last year's success solely to Pudge, and now Penny is called a fatass, Choi an awful batter, and here is LoDuca to lead the team to greatness despite how many grand slams Conine hits while LoDca is on the bench or how well Cabrera is hitting or how you could put a bat in 99% of the world's hands and find a way to score atleast one run with the bases loaded and 0 outs.

 

Listen.. the team was good last year, but relied a lot on luck to get them through. Luck isn't a great thing to rely our chances on, because over the course of 162 games it can leave you high and dry with a runner on third base.

Trade Gonzalez? What are you smoking dude? AG's defense is stellar, as is his chemistry with Luis Castillo. And chemistry is SO important between the SS and 2B. Perhaps his avg isn't as high as we'd all like it to be, but the guy DOES make clutch hits when we need them. If his offensive production and $4Mil salary are the only reasons to trade him, then u should think back to last year. How many games did he save for us with either a clutch hit or fantastic defense? Here's a hint: MORE THAN A FEW.

 

AGonz is a vital part of the heart & soul of this team. At a cool $4 Mil a year, he is a steal, in my opinion.

 

:hat

The Swede.... any reply?

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So are you going to reply or what man?

Trade Gonzalez? What are you smoking dude?

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The same stuff as Ricky Willia.... nevermind :lol .

B/c he makes 4 million next year and we need to trim payroll to be able to absorb Lo Ducas and Motas salary for next year plus resign Pavano. Also, we have Josh Wilson at AAA who is one of the best defensive shortstops in the minors and he can hit for a good avarage (has a better than .300 avg while playing in AA and AAA this year)

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Ramon Castro was a great hitter in Triple A.....Nuff said...

 

Alex isn't going anywhere. $4 mil won't trim that much off of the payroll.

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Excellent point, we should never look to minor league performance in our prospects.....

AA, yes, we should because Carolina's ballpark is a pitchers' park much like PPS and the league is full of young prospects, not non-prospects and old marginal major leaguers that fill the AAA ranks.

In response, OBP is not an overrated or misleading statistic. In fact, it is the most pure statistic around. It is simple and beautiful. It tells you how often a guy makes out. Isn't the object of the game to score runs? And how do you score runs but by getting hits and getting on base. In other words, not making outs. Alex Gonzalez makes out the MOST often of anyone in the major leagues. If you read Baseball Prospectus or other sources, the amount of runs scored per year by a team can be predicted within reasonable error using among others but most importantly the statistic of On Base Percentage.

 

RBI's, on the other hand, can be tremendously circumstantial. Therefore, they are not a fair measure of how productive a player actually is. A guy who is hitting in the .230's should be expected to deliver a hit with guys on base about 23% of the time. Also, a guy with a .260 OBP should make out during a rally 74% of the time. That means that Alex should be killing rallies or not starting them at that rate. Theoretically, if he got up a million times, the percentage of times he comes through - which is defined by not making out, which means getting a hit or walking - will approach his OBP, which we will take for now to be .288, which is his career OBP. Therefore, all of this says that he SHOULD not be productive percentage wise. Looking at his actual numbers, he isn't. He hits .228 and has an OBP of .258 with runners on. (I will qualify that I don't like using averages with Runners On in general b/c the sample size isn't big enough. Thus, it can fluctuate due to luck or circumstance. I would prefer to use OBP or BA in general). So the next question is why does he have 61 RBI if he has poor percentages. The reason is clear: nearly half of his at bats come with runners on, 197 ABs with RO and 209 w/o RO. (Which again goes to show why it is so important to have a high OBP. Without Choi, Lowell, and Cabs having high OBPs Agon wouldn't have that many ABs with guys on). If better percentage shortstops (in other words better hitters) are put in those situations they would produce more. In conclusion, Agon's circumstantial numbers, RBI, are padded b/c the amount of opportunities he has had, which does not make him productive. Specifically, being 5th in the MLB in RBI among SS does not make him the 5th most productive SS. His percentages, however, as bad as they are make him one of the least productive.

 

In terms of HR, those are less circumstantial. That is solid for a SS, but his horrible percentages grossly outweigh this one bright spot. Though I would argue that 5 of those HRs came in the 18 games against AL teams who do not see him as much. Therefore, they didn't know to just throw him all low, outside curveballs and let him wave at them.

 

In response to his game-winning HR in the world series, let's remember that that was one hit. In fact it was 1 of his mere 10 hits in 62 ABs in the playoffs. He hit .161 with an OBP of .175 and a slugging percentage of .274. He made out a wopping 82.5% of the time he stepped to the plate. That is the definition of a nearly an automatic out. If he weren't such a liability offensively, perhaps we wouldn't have been in that situation. That HR is no argument, since he was PATHETIC in the playoffs as a whole.

 

In response to OBP being misleading, and my using it to mislead, I agree that statistics taken narrowly and out of context and without view of the whole picture can mislead. However, I am not doing that. OBP is the most basic and central statistic (along with arguably Slugging Percentage). By using OBP, I cannot be using numbers out of context because it is literally in every context.

 

Also, having the 2nd highest fielding percentage does not make him the second best defensive SS. Range Factor and zone rating are much more fair statistics. But I won't argue that he is poor defensively because he isn't. Comparing his defensive statistics to the rest of the league (which I won't type here) shows he is one of the better defensive SS. My argument uses the logic of Value Based Drafting (for those who do fantasy football) to show why he isn't good. VBD compares every player to the average player at that position. I can apply this two ways. Numerically, I argue that (though I cannot prove w/o doing work I don't care to do) that he loses us more runs when he is hitting due to his horrendus OBP than he saves us defensively compared to the average SS. Meaning that, the average SS adds X net number of runs to a team. B/c of his terrible OBP he adds significantly less runs than the average shortstop, and the runs he saves defensively do not outweigh the runs he cost us. Again all of this compared to the average SS. Thus, he is worse than the average SS numerically. I think that his hitting is so bad that it makes him one of the worst SS in the game. Qualitatively, the difference between his defensive ability and the average SS ability is much much less than the difference between his offensive ability and the average SS ability.

 

I think as mentioned before that we could easily find a SS who is an average hitter (about a .320 OBP) and is close to Alex defensively for cheaper. And we would be better as a team.

 

In closing using the words of some scout that ESPN uses, AGON SUCKS: "Gonzalez is a low-average hitter who is capable of hitting for power when he gets something to pull, especially a fastball on the inner half of the plate. It's a wonder he ever gets one, considering his oft-demonstrated willingness to chase breaking balls off the outside corner. He's a reactive hitter, and doesn't look to drive the ball on hitters' counts. Lacking both the on-base ability to be an asset near the top of the order and the power to hit in an RBI spot, he has no clear offensive role."

I have no idea why any pitcher would throw Alex a fastball anywhere near the plate...

Sorry Swede, Don't buy it. While I agree OBP can be a telling stat in some cases, you greatly exaggerate its meaning.

 

Just using this as an example, but Bobby Crosby and Jack Wilson have identical OBPs this season...would you try telling me Crosby has been just as productive as Wilson has this year? Give me a break...Gonzalez is a free swinger, he's not the only one to ever take this approach at the plate, so he is bound to take few walks. Couple that with a .250 average and logic tells you he's bound to have a low OBP. Getting on base is not the only way to produce offensively however, and Gonzalex proves that point. Only Miguel Tejada, Carlos Guillen and Jose Valentin have more HR than Gonzo in the league, and Tejada, Guillen, Valentin, Michael Young have more RBI. He hits for power and knocks in runs, while playing gold glove defense...you're being awfully narrow minded to say he sucks simply because of his OBP.

 

He's far from perfect, I think everyone here knows that. But his defensive value (you're kidding yourself if you think he isn't among the best here) and power numbers make him well worth the 4 mil hes due to get paid next year.

The value of making the least amount of outs gets more inconsequential the lower a batter hits in a NL lineup. Rallies don't happen often with a .144/158/185 pitcher or .230/308/358 pinch-hitter.

Glad there was a lot of discussion on this......I feel better that Alex will be around.....I really love watching him on the field....his batting....eh, but lately he's been pretty good. I don't know as much about baseball as most of you and don't really follow any other teams unless its Marlins related, so I don't have a whole lot to compare to ....but I just love to watch some of the plays he makes!