The Season that Was: Adam Lind

Adam Lind came into the season needing to prove that he deserved to have the option picked up in his contract.

2012 wasn't a great season for Lind, he hit .255/.314/.414 in just 93 games.  He was sent down to the minors to find his swing and work with Chad Mottola. It seemed to work. Course now Mottola is gone.

Around here we've long thought that Adam should only be hitting against lefties, but with us often having 42 guys out in the bullpen, it's tough to carry platoon DHes, so Lind gets too many at bats against guys throwing with the wrong hand.

I like Lind, he's been with the team for awhile now, and we are getting to see more and more of his personality. I like listening to him in interviews, he actually says things, instead of giving us cliches.

The prediction thread was interesting, some figured David Cooper would have his job, but then we didn't know about Cooper's back at the time. Some figured he'd be let go during spring training. My guess:

.275/.333/.450 with 15 home runs, 65 RBI.

In reality:

So he did better than I thought, that's going to happen with many players on this year's team.

Fangraphs has him at a 1.8 WAR, giving him a value of $9.2 million. I'd imagine the first option year will be picked up. He had a .368 BABIP, up from .316 last year, so there might be some luck built into his season.

Compared to 2012, Lind walked more (9.8% up from 8.2). He struck out more (19.8% up from 17.3). He hit a lot more line drives (21.3% up from 17.1). Fewer ground balls (45.9% from 48.3) and fewer fly balls (32.8% from 34.6). Far more fly balls left the park for Lind this year than last (19.2% from 12.1). We all could see that he was hitting the ball harder this year than in the past few.

He hit right-handers great (.309/.385/.539 with 20 home runs in 369 at bats) and didn't hit lefties at all (.208/.240/.333 with 3 home runs in 96 at bats. No matter what Zaun says, Adam shouldn't be hitting against lefties.

He was better on the road (.314/.356/.554 with 14 home runs) than at home (.260/.358/.435 with 9 home runs). We really need a split on how he hit RHP on the road.

Lind was terrific with RISP (.279/.373/.606). If you went by my twitter feed, you'd think that no one on the team ever hit with RISP.

By month Lind hit:

April: .244/.397/.311, with no home runs and 3 RBI.

May: .346/.409/.590, with 4 home runs and 8 RBI.

June: .350/.362/.620 with 7 home runs and 22 RBI.

July: .195/.263/.356 with 2 home runs and 7 RBI.

August: .253/.356/.379 with 3 home runs and 7 RBI.

September: .324/.378/.662 with 7 home runs and 20 RBI.

It was a strange year, he started off walking all the time, then added power, then stopped walking, stopped hitting, back to walking, and then put it all together again in September.

As a first baseman he hit .299/.348/.485. At DH he hit .260/.354/.422.

I'm not a big fan of his defense at first base, but he does ok. Fangraphs has him at a -7.4 UZR/150. I'd consider him a little worse than the average 1B. He made 7 errors, giving him a .989 FA, some worse than the .994 that is average for first basemen.

Fangraphs also considers Lind a worse than average base runner, saying he was 3.7 runs worse than the average base runner. No surprise to any of us that watched him. He had 1 stolen base, and I'm not sure how he did that.

His favorite team to face? He hit .422/.471/.672 with 4 home runs and 10 RBI in 17 games vs the Orioles. He also did well (.433/.455/.733 with 3 home runs and 10 RBI) against the Rangers.

His least favorite? He was 1 for 12 with a double, in 5 games, against the Tigers. He hit .120/.214/.160 in 7 games against the Angels.

His longest hit streak was 6 games, but then he had a number of games where he pinch hit or only had a couple of at bats. His longest on base streak was 13 games. His longest streak without a home run was 22 games. His longest streak without a hit was 4 games.

I figured we would have heard by now that the Jays were exercising their option for the 2014 season. I'm sure we'll hear soon. Used right (only against RHP) he's a useful player. He really has been hurt by the high expectations we had for him, when he first came up. When it turned out that he was a useful platoon player, not the star we hoped to see, instead of seeing the good, we tended to be disappointed that he didn't hit the ceiling we set for him.