Setting Up His Failure

Another Monday, another mailbag. Another mailbag another marge-simpsonesque groan of exasperation.

There's a question about Austin Kearns. After a paragraph praising his play, the answer sez:

I would like to see him hit 35 home runs and drive in 110 runs. I've been told many times by members of the Nats' front office that Kearns is the club's second-best player behind Ryan Zimmerman. Now it's time for Kearns to put up Zimmerman-type stats. I hope the second half of the 2007 season was an indication of what Kearns is capable of, as he hit .285 with 11 home runs and 44 RBIs.

I won't point out the logical fallacy of how if his second half is what he's capable of, then doubling it doesn't get him close to the targets, cause that's the low-hanging fruit. But is 35/110 a reasonable expectation?

No way in hell. And if that's what you're expecting out of him, he's never going to make you happy. How many players do you think hit 35/110 last season? Lower. Nope. Lower. Yeah, you got it! Good guess!

Here's the list:
Arod
Prince
Howard (why doesn't he have a nickname?)
Carlos Pena (who knew?)
Holliday
Big Papi.

That's it. That's what the 'expectations' of Austin Kearns are. Think he's going to meet that? No way. And there's no sense in even putting the bar up there.

Think I'm being unfair (of course I am! It's a blog! We're supposed to do cheapshots!)? Let's lower it to 30/100. So how many batters hit that last year? Nope. Lower. Even Lower. Hey, you got it again!
Add Cabrera, Berkman, Beltran, Pujols, Lee, Morneau, Adrian Gonzalez (who knew?) and David Wright to the list. All (save for Gonzalez) have won or easily COULD have won an MVP over the last three seasons.

Could he hit it? Yeah, perhaps. He's got a ton of potential. But more likely, he's going to be a 25/90 kinda guy with where he's probably going to hit in the lineup (5th or lower).

But with Kearns, those counting stats sort of miss the point of what makes him so great. He's not going to be someone who's going to excel in the triple crown stats. What makes him good He has decent mid-range power. He hit's a decent number of doubles. He has a good eye, walking enough to give him a solid on-base percentage. Lots of little things add up into an ok offensive player.

When I looked at his '07 season closely earlier this offseason, I came to what was (even for a Kearns fanboy) a pretty surprising conclusion; he's one of the four or five best right fielders in the NL.

His offensive stats were hampered by RFK, but if you put them into context, he was basically a league-average offensive performer. And it's his defense -- easily the best range in the league -- that puts him over the top. Various defensive metrics have him 10-20 runs better than an average right fielder, putting him into that first tier of RFers overall.

Will his counting stats go up in the new park? For sure. I'm going to be bidding high on this guy in my roto draft this year. But you need to have reasonable expectations of his numbers. And to really value the guy, you need to look beyond those numbers. He's a solid, solid player.