Raul and Fielding

by ~ December 18th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

I don’t generally like pushing the “Raul Ibanez is a crappy fielder” thing too often.  It’s true, and I brought it up when I needed to, but now that he’s gone I’ve tried to keep the posts about him warm and fuzzy, because I’ve been a big Raul fan since he first debuted in the mid-90s and he was one of the few players that I feel sentimental towards.  Lame, I know; but it is what it is.

Anyway, Raul gave a few interesting quotes to Geoff Baker recently regarding defensive metrics.  Personally, I was impressed with what he had to say, mostly because it sounded a lot more intelligent than you’d expect from the average player.  That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he said, and it has drummed up a quick response from the Mariners blogosphere.

I’m not really eager to join this debate right now, so I’ll just direct you to some good reads if you’re interested:

I’d like to know what you all think of this.

Update: Even The Book has caught wind of Baker’s post:

This article has some interesting quotes from Ibanez.  Of course, he is wrong on a lot of levels, but I have to give him tons of credit for being somewhat familiar with sabermetric defensive metrics and with sabermetrics in general.  I would venture a guess that less than 1 in 20 players has ever heard of the word sabermetrics, or if they have, they have no idea what it means.

The other interesting thing is how players assess themselves.  We have discussed this before.  It has to be one of the more difficult things for a professional athlete to do.  You are pretty much unable to see the forest for the trees, among other obstacles, not the least of which are pride and ego.\

I would love to sit down with a player like Ibanez or Granderson and just shoot the breeze about baseball in general and perhaps about sabermetrics and scouting.

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  • Kevin F

    To start off with… Raul is in denial. :)

    He is… well, a below average defender. I’ve said it before and I’ll stick with my opinion on him. Nothing personal Raul… you’re a great guy, a leader and class act… but your defense is a different story.

    Now… what really stands out in this article to me is Raul’s take on Armstrong:

    “No one cares more about that team than he does,” Ibanez said of Armstrong. “The team and the city. He was distraught with what went on last year. I know because I had some one-on-one conversations with him. He cares so deeply about the city and the fans. He wants them to have a winner. He wants nothing more than for the franchise to win a championship. Believe me, he cares more than people realize,”

    Now I’m not questioning Raul’s word… ’cause I don’t believe he’d lie about it… but why, in all the years Armstrong has been running this team has he never come out and actually said “Our goal is to win a championship”? All I’ve ever heard from him or Lincoln is that they want to build a “competitive team”.

    I do hope Raul is right… and that in his conversations with Armstrong he isn’t taking what Armstrong said out of context and that a championship is really his ultimate goal.