from Amazon
Monday, July 19, 2010
W/W - Wins over Willie
One day, perhaps when Willie Bloomquist retires in ten years, I’m going to change the name WAR to W/W. He’s like the perfect replacement-level description of a player: a guy who plays multiple positions as well as you’d expect someone like that to do and hit as poorly as you’d expect a replacement-level player to hit, but who does it every single year.
I have this crazy theory that Willie Ballgame players (Craig Counsel, David Eckstein, Mike Cameron, Dustin Pedroia, etc… it seems that being a white 2B fits the bill) defy the typical aging patterns. These guys seem to improve in some way to compensate for their loss of physical skills. Just a thought, nothing I have sat down to study. It also goes into what scouts look for in terms of “heart”. You take two guys at age 21, and make the better guy the one with less heart, and the heart guy will have the much longer career.
Am I the only one to have this thought?