The Season That Was: Vernon Wells
by Tom Dakers on Oct 10, 2009 5:26 PM EDT
in Toronto Blue Jays Analysis
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PrintI guess you really don't need me to tell you Vernon Wells had a terrible season. After a 2008 season that was about as good offensively as you could hope for except for missing a third of he season with various injuries. I thought he was likely to have a good year after an off season with a new personal trainer and the carrot of wanting to play or the US team in the World Baseball Classic but with amount of time he missed the season before, he wasn't allowed to play in the WBC and a hamstring injury in spring training slowed him some.
In the Community Projection Project we guessed that Vernon would have a .340 OBP and .500 SLG in 600 plate appearances. We were off by a bit....
We were short 84 PA, we kind of guessed he might miss some time through injuries and we didn't figure on Cito playing him every day, no matter what. And he was 29 points short on OBP and 100 points short on slugging.
Fangraphs has him at a -0.1 WAR, so he almost made it back to replacement level with a late season surge. To be fair, replacement level for the Jays, at CF, is likely far worse than they figure. His BABIP was .282, slightly low but then he had a pretty high percentage of pop ups and soft ground balls. His line drive rate was quite low, 14.8%
His longest hitting streak of the year was 11 games in September. His longest homerless streak was 38 games May 6 to June 20.
Surprisingly enough he hit lefties (.206/.279/.323) far worse than right handers (.278/.322/.425). In the past he's hit left handers better than righties. I don't know why he'd reverse it this year. He wasn't all that much worse against RHP than his career norms.
You likely know he hit much better on the road (.300/.335/.444) than at home (.214/.285/.348). If you knew he would have had these weird splits before the season started you could have worked a strange platoon system for him. Bat him in the middle of the order on the road against RHP, sit him at home against lefties.
Hitting by Month:
April .282/.345/.465
May .252/.300/.361
June .212/.259/.346
July .271/.287/.447
Auguest .260/.339/.410
Sept./Oct .285/.331/.390
So, he started off the season ok and went downhill quick after that.
And, as you know, he didn't hit well with RISP, .205/.300/.329.
His favorite team to play? He had 3 good games against the Cincinnati Reds (.417/.462/.917) and he hit the Tigers well (.429/.500/.643) in 8 games. Least favorite? Well, he didn't have a hit in 3 games against the Marlins.
Fielding? Fangraphs had him at -17.6 UZR on the season, worst in the AL among regular CFers but -12.2 UZR/150 which was second worst, slightly better than Jacoby Ellsbury. That's not exactly a selling point, slightly better than Ellsbury in CF. He only made 1 error all season for a .997 FP. I thought his fielding improved as the season went on, early in the season balls seemed to be falling at his feet a lot, later on he seemed to be moving better to the ball. Maybe the hamstring troubles slowed him more than they let on early in the year.
I'd like to think that next year will be better, I don't see how it wouldn't be but then I don't know why this year was so bad. I'm not sure that Wells knows why. He was amazing durable this year starting 153 games in CF. Only Cito could play a guy in 153 games who was having that bad a season. But then after letting Rios go we really didn't have anyone else to play CF.
One of my questions, all season, was that if Cito and Gene Tenace are such great batting coaches why couldn't they help Vernon?
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I think so too...I think he has a decent year coming
but then I’m not sure why this one was so bad…every time I figured he was pulling out of it he’d go back into slump mode.
Vernon Wells Trivia
He holds the Blue Jays record for most hits (215) in a season. Yes, it’s true. Back when he was a stud in 2003, he broke Tony Fernandez’s record of 213 hits that Fernandez achieved in 1986.
(As a side note, Tony held the record for most hits by a shortstop in a single season with those 213 hits until A-Rod came along and beat it by two in 1996. For some reason, I knew that Tony Fernandez nugget as a kid in the 80’s and really enjoyed that it was a Blue Jay that held the record, albeit an obscure one.)
If you want to take one plus for Vernon out of this season is that he matched his career high total in Stolen Bases with 17. I was hoping he would hit 20 but still.
And on top of that even though it may be subjective I thought there was plenty of times he looked absolutely great on the basepaths, going from 1st to 3rd and knowing when to advance. He was aggressive and it really showed (at least to me)
Life as a Toronto Sports Fan?... *sigh*... It is what it is...
He needs to completely revamp his approach at the plate
He constantly falls over or loses balance whenever someone throws a bit inside, or if he tries to swing at a ball away.
Vern is way too susceptible to the high fastball or a breaking pitch down and away. I havent seen him hit anything than a mistake over the middle of the plate well in a long time.
Onions Baby Onions
I'd still love to know
if the Cubs would bite on the oft-proposed Wells for Bradley deal. A few of their bloggers seemed to be in favour of it, which of course means nothing but maybe it’s not as lopsided as I perceive it to be.
As wonderful as it is to believe in VW, it would take far more than the moderate recovery most of us are projecting for him to be anywhere close to worth his contract going forward. I don’t think anyone sees him averaging 5-6 WAR over the next several years, so really the best thing the Jays could do would be to unload his contract. Taking on Bradley’s remaining $10-$20M (depending on whether his 2011 option vests) would be peanuts by comparison, even if he never ended up playing a game for us.
I guess it will depend on what Rogers wants to do, but if I were AA I would seriously consider making it a cornerstone of my offseason/2010 strategy to get out from under this deal one way or another. Even if the Cubs aren’t interested, if VW manages to have a semi-adequate first half of next season we might be able to sucker a contending team into taking him on (it worked with Rios).
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