Quick index of recent SSI reads on Hardy:

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POTD JJ Hardy - The Bad -- Dr. D argues that Hardy's declining LD rates, together with his low FB run values, paint a SABR picture of a batter who has been permanently "solved" by major league pitching.  

And that even his career-best 113 OPS+ was lucky, so that the upside was never quite as glam as the HR column made it look, anyway.

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POTD JJ Hardy - The Bad & Ugly -- in which we note that the Brewers' tools scouts themselves flunked Hardy out of major-league baseball. 

This is very important to MLB front-office thinking, the question "What does his own organization think of him?," because the average MLB front-office denizen understands about the 250-for-1,000 light bulbs concept.

If you listen, again and again you'll find scouts and GM's referring to a player's own organization and its level of belief in the player.  It's very rare to see an org (for example) DFA a player and then get anything decent for the player.

It's ironic, because by this logic a team cannot trade a player it wants to trade.  :- )  But that's essentially the paradox that GM's work against all the time.

Which is why you'll see teams keep lousy players in the lineup.  LOL.  They're trying to sell other teams the shtick that they themselves aren't buying.  It rarely works.  Even when an Adrian Beltre type gets hot for a month, it's not often you see him oversold, right?

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POTD JJ Hardy - The Good - As a glove specialist with a light bat, a la Jack Wilson or Adam Everett perhaps, Hardy retained the ability to stick around in major league baseball.

Interestingly, Hardy's trade price (Carlos Gomez) was a lot lower than I'd have guessed.  I thought maybe 20% of GM's would buy into some kind of upside.  Apparently GM's didn't buy into Dr. D's upside scenario even that far.

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Lopez' LD-FB factors vs Hardy's -- the question came up, perhaps Hardy's LD% crash just meant he was lofting the ball?

Nay verily, bro'.  Lopez' profile serves as a good contrast here.

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Hardy - Buying Low?  or Taking a Flier? -  A discussion of the concept of buying low, which is purchasing a commodity at a predictable trench in a predictable sine wave -- vs. taking a flier, which is what you do when you have no idea whether a player is going to rebound.

The Mariners, if they extend Jack Wilson, will view themselves as "buying low."  I'm concerned that it may be more of a flier, but accept both worldviews as reasonable in Wilson's case.   Wilson, past 30 years of age now, is who he is.

In Hardy's case, my personal opinion was that whoever got Hardy was taking a flier.  Certainly Minnesota paid a "flier" price.

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The interesting question here to me is, how could Milwaukee come up with both Bill Hall and J.J. Hardy at the same time.*  That's two early-20's stars who did the bug-on-the-windshield trick very early in the careers.  Rare enough to ever see it happen, but the Brewers had two lightning bolts hit them simultaneously.

Would be very interested to hear theories about how Hall and Hardy came up on the same ballclub.

Cheers,

Dr D