Juan Pierre loses leadoff role

[caulfield12]

I think he'll finish around .280/.325/.345/.670, his ISO could very well be lower than .065. There's just no way he's "done" at this point in his career but he Cell is just one of the worst parks imaginable for his game, not a lot of room in the outfield for balls to fall in front of outfielders or squirt past them in the gaps for hustle doubles or cavernous gaps to pick up triples especially compared to Dolphin and Dodger Stadium, unfortunately he's not strong enough to take advantage of easy homeruns available at the Cell.

 

I would love to hear the institutional meetings with Ozzie, Hahn, KW, Reinsdorf, etc., when this point was raised (about how his game would or wouldn't translate both to the AL and to this particular home field for 81 games) and how it was effectively rebutted by someone, and who was it that made the strongest arguments for PIERRE after Ozzie?

 

Hahn? Walker? Gellinger? Scouting department? Buddy Bell? Hard Art Kusyner/Grady Fuson (joking...)

[gatnom]

Thanks. That was very much appreciated. I didn't know that JP offers nothing outside of BA and speed.

 

Glad I could help.

[caulfield12]

We should have just trotted Fred Lewis out there and saved a lot of heartache and money wringing our hands over Juan Pierre at this twilight stage of his career as a speed-based player.

[Kalapse]

Bingo. fathom was the first one (first one I saw anyway) that brought up the park factor. And your season line is more than reasonable. I wish we had a better option. It sounds like I'm advocating Pierre for the lead-off spot. That's just not the case.

Park Factor has been one of my top arguments for not acquiring him over the past few years.

 

I posted this in the Juan Pierre Trade thread back in December:

 

One thing you'll notice watching Pierre play at home; our park is not suited for him one bit. The ball tends to hang up in the air due to the odd wind currents and there isn't a lot of room in the outfield unlike the 3 stadiums he's played in for the majority of his career so a lot of those shanks that would normally drop in front of an outfielder or the ball lofted into the gap that just gets down between the 2 defenders won't be happening nearly as often in the 81 games he'll play at the Cell. It's going to be hard for him to pick up many extra base hits or cheap singles at the Cell and since he's not really capable of driving the ball far enough to get it out of the normally easy-to-homer-in Cell he won't be able to take advantage of that either, our home ballpark really isn't built for his style of play.

Now it's May and he's hitting .188 with a .000 ISO in his 12 home starts. The Sox really need to do a better job tailoring their roster to fit their home ballpark.

[JohnCangelosi]

Park Factor has been one of my top arguments for not acquiring him over the past few years.

 

I posted this in the Juan Pierre Trade thread back in December:

 

 

Now it's May and he's hitting .188 with a .000 ISO in his 12 home starts. The Sox really need to do a better job tailoring their roster to fit their home ballpark.

I remember this comment as well and I thought it was extremely perceptive, however, I haven't seen Pierre hit the ball out of the infield enough to even see this proven true or false- all I've personally seen is the guy is getting the bat taken out of his hands and loves a nice 2 hopper to second base

Edited May 4, 2010 by JohnCangelosi

[Milkman delivers]

He does if he's hitting .280, let alone .300. I mean it's really that simple. JP is a career .301 hitter in 6064 career plate appearances coming into this year. He's hitting .202 this year. Has he declined so much over one 6-month off-season that his average has dropped 100 points off his career mark? I'd say hell no.

 

I was joking about how terrible he's been.

[greg775]

Now it's May and he's hitting .188 with a .000 ISO in his 12 home starts. The Sox really need to do a better job tailoring their roster to fit their home ballpark.

Go to the top of the page

 

Amen brother, good call.