Welcome back to "The Dilemma"! This is the series on Boston Sports Junior that breaks down any difficult decision or problem. It's infrequent, but clever and in-depth. Harry Bro produces the series by himself, with occasional help from his collaborators, Jason Robbins and Sam Denomme. In the last addition of the series, we broke down the Red Sox lineup. Now, we are continuing the effort.
Last time, we covered the projected (not just by me but by many sources) top three men in the lineup: Ellsbury, Pedroia, and Crawford. Let's continue with Adrian Gonzalez. This man has been rumored to be going to Boston since last offseason, and he's a bone-fide superstar. Statistics and highlights say different things; with Gonzalez both are sparkling. We are going to try and do something we've not yet done on "The Dillemma": import highlights onto the addition. This could lead up to a weekly highlight reel collection...we will now make our attempt. Brace yourselves. No, it didn't work the way we wanted, but we did get a Youtube video that might help you get an idea of how far this guy can hit the baseball. Now, ditching pointless attempts at highlights, we look at the statistics, which are frankly excellent.
Last year, my main man Adrian Gonzalez hit .298, sprinkling in 31 homers and 101 RBIS and a .393 OBP. His slugging percentage was also high, at .511. The walk and strikeout totals were also good: 93 walks, 114 strikeouts. His fielding percentage ranked in .995, making 8 errors overall in close to 1500 chances. These were spectacular numbers for Adrian. However, there are worry signs. Adrian had a total of 176 hits last year, which is slightly low for a prolific hitter of his kind, but out of those 176 hits, he only had 33 doubles. That is not an extremely prolific number, and in addition to that, Adrian had no triples. It may be "just me", but I don't like players with that many doubles. I like to see more doubles out of hitters like Adrian; if a player has 50 doubles, I am almost immediately turned on to that player. Mark Teixeira, a player who had a significantly worse year than Gonzalez in 2010, managed to have more doubles and more homers. The other thing which may be in play here is park effects; the Boston Globe recently featured an excellent article on Gonzalez's hit chart and what it becomes if translated into Fenway, and this Teixeira-Gonzalez comparison proves a point along the same lines. Teixeira had 8 more doubles at home than he did on the road in 2010; Gonzalez, however, had 9 more doubles on the road than at home. Petco Park, it is common knowledge, is a bad hitter's park. The Globe article demonstrated that. Give Gonzalez Teixeira's home doubles numbers, and you have Gonzalez at 44 doubles. Since Gonzalez is a better hitter than Tex, you can add doubles to that total if you put him in Yankee Stadium. Homer numbers go up as well. So, the finale on this argument is that Gonzalez has been negatively effected by Petco Park, and would do better in better hitter's parks like Fenway or Yankee Stadium. Regardless of this fluky number change in numbers based on parks, I am still turned off by Gonzalez's lack of doubles and lack of speed (no stolen bases in 2010). However, he will still be a beastly hitter in a hitter's park this year, and we can expect big things out of the four hole in Terry Francona's lineup. The last question to answer: why put him in the four hole?
Speed. Pedroia has decent speed, and Ellsbury and Crawford are known as veritable cheetahs on the basepaths. Put Gonzalez behind them to drive them in, and you get a lineup that is oriented around power and speed, and that's a lineup that scores runs.
That is going to be the only breakdown today, folks, but welcome the Dilemma back to your internet browser soon! Let's break down the lineup as we have it so far.
Jacoby Ellsbury
Dustin Pedroia
Carl Crawford
Adrian Gonzalez
See you next time!
Sources: Youtube, ESPN.COM
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