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James Jones - the Bad
By all sabermetric rights, this cake shouldn't be out of the oven yet.
Our man Spectator serves as our saber conscience, reminding us that we need to pay more attention to how players have actually performed, than to what scouts are saying about them. Here is Spec's March writeup on Jones.
Dr. D signs off, with gusto. There ain't much in the performance record that would make you want to give Safeco time to James Jones right now. He's here because they don't like Saunders and 'cause of Almonte's situation.
Can we survive it? Can Nick Franklin play center field? Is there any merit to playing with 5 infielders? Inquiring SSI minds demand to know.
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James Jones - the Good
Moves like Kenny Lofton. Stays low to the ground. Wiry strong. Very fast-twitchy. Looks great as he takes on pitchers he's never seen before.
Takes the kind of cut-down swing you wish Abraham Almonte had in his golf bag. Keeps the bat in the zone a long time, swings on the plane of the pitch. Very QUICK at the plate (this is one of Teddy Ballgame's Golden Principles).
The speed only helps his batting average, of course, and if he can get on base at all, he's going to have a high ratio of coming around to score. Last we checked, the game was about runs, wasn't it.
.....
Plate discipline stats, the first two weeks in, look remarkably solid.
| Player | SwStr% | Sw% | Contact% | O-Zone% |
| MLB Average | 9.3 | 46 | 79 | 29 |
| James Jones, MLB | 7.3 (!) | 51 | 88 (!) | 35 |
And his EYE is 3:3 so far in the majors.
So if that's all Jones is going to do, is crouch real low to the ground, take a whippy, level little swing and try to put the ball in play, then maybe he can defend himself. Even before he's technically "ready."
And we do have do declare, in fairness to the lad, that at Tacoma he "busted out" at age 25 to hit .313/.382/.450 in twenty games. Don't ignore the fact that the scouts thought he'd leaped a plateau.
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James Jones - the Ugly
The M's felt themselves in dire, Dire circumstances as far as center field goes. Personally, I think they have a creative solution that is opaque to them via Paradigm Paralysis.
But! Taking it on their terms... if Jones is a truly legit glove man in CF (and he might be) then what does he have to hit? 75, 80 OPS+? There's no reason to rule that out.
It's fun to watch his little Lofton imitation at the plate, even if we ain't going to be getting 60 SB's out on the paths.
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James Jones - the Templates
Who would be the best 25-year-old center fielders who had been mediocre in the minor leagues? I dunno, I don't have those databases on hand to sort through ... do the Fangraphs databases have a filter for KBIZLT swings?
Kenny Lofton his ownself got started pretty late, we notice here. He got a cuppa coffee, at age 24, and age 25 he was a good player. Age 26-27 he was a devastating offensive weapon.
The takeaway: Lofton never rose above the low minors until actually at age 24. In Dr. D's mind's eye, he doesn't remember that Lofton-style hitters need advanced age-arcs. He could be wrong.
Let's see, who else was a wiry-strong speed guy with a slashy, cut-down KBIZLT swing... am not databasing here, just noodlin'.
Ichiro was obviously in that mold as a hitter. Pass on. Brett Butler! He hit that way. Sho' nuff, no early development there.
...........
I dunno. They wanna give Jones a month to see how often he can slash the ball into play, I'm enjoying the spectacle. What do you think?
Cheers,
Dr D
That isn't saying much, as I am getting rather discouraged with Saunders' ability to learn and retain that learning...but I think Jones has a better stop loss. Which is really what I'm looking for at this point from CF...we can upgrade the corners by trade or in free agency a lot easier than we can upgrade CF. So...we need to stop blowing out the line-up card with 50 OPS+ bats in CF who are also costing us runs defensively. We need competency out there.
Couldn't watch the weekend games, but was worried at first blush about his ability to barrel up inside heat. But Lofton could do that, and if there is a bit of Lofton in Jones then that worry should go away.
Bake McBride was a LHB, slasher, low to the ground (at the plate) wirey, could run: He came up at age 25. Did have 67 AA games and 118 AAA games behind him, hitting .322-.380-.505 at AA and (approx) .302-.364-.469 at AAA. College kid who didn't get his first full season until age 22. Was a lifetime .300 hitter, ROY and an All-Star.
He came up a CF but ended up in RF.
He wouldn't be a bad guy for Jones to end up as.
We had gone after Choo instead of Cano in the offseason. All sorts of problems would have obvious solutions to them right now. But, water under the bridge now. Jones looks like he belongs out there. Let's ride him for a while anyway.
I have indeed been picturing Kenny Lofton when I see James at the plate...but he's not as fast, and nowhere near as good at telling a ball from a strike as Lofton. I needed a scaled back version of Lofton...Bake McBride is a good one. And you can use b-ref's similarity scores to assemble a list of similar guys to McBride...
Dale Mitchell (1950s, Cincinnati Red #2 hitter), Freddy Leach (1920s Philly slap hitter), Harry Rice (20s and 30s Browns and Tigers #2 hitter), Frank Demaree (a member of some pretty good mid-30s Cubs teams), Melky Cabrera...
all of these guys hit solidly right away...hit the big leagues a bit late, and fizzled within 10 years of starting.
Food for thought.
I was going to say he reminded me of him. I just chose not to. :-)
First swing i saw Jones take I thouht Magee. Jones slapped at it for an opposite field single exactly how Willie used to do it. Magee had some serious power when he wanted but was typically more than content going the opposite field.
...bu otherwise seems like a fair comp.
Wasn't Jones late to the game, too? If you carve out three seasons of McGee's early career and dial back the SB to 25-30 instead of 50...I could see that.
Ride Jones in CF for as long as it works, but I also think we should just leave Saunders in there in RF and let him find his level. In looking over the typical advanced stats (and I know you have more data than I do so I would be interested in hearing more on the matter) I just don't see anything glaringly wrong with Michael's approach. The things that stand out to me are a higher line drive rate and a lower home run rate. But he's not swinging at bad pitches, he's making good contact, his BABIP is low at .266 (.298 and .297 last two seasons), and he's hitting more line drives this season. He's the only guy on the team who seems to know how to bunt. He had a tough at bat in the ninth against Holland and worked the count full before Greg came back with a pretty much unhittable pitch for a lefty.
I think the ".790 OPS second half of 2013" Michael Saunders is lurking there somewhere. We saw glimpses of that hitter earlier this month. Leading off is probably causing him to adjust his approach somewhat, but I don't see warning signals anywhere within the stats.
But we are awfully lefty oriented then in the OF. I wouldn't mind finding a ML(TM) quality right handed hitting OF to do what Bloomie does for the infield. I'm not sure Gillespie is that guy - I'm ready to pull the plug on him: you gotta step up and seize the chance when you get it. Romero - maybe. But someone who can help us tread water against lefty pitchers until teams are ready to make serious offers for one of our shortstops. Ryan Raburn is off to a terrible start. Maybe we could get him cheap. That would be a move I'd like to see us make, so long as it's not Bavasi making the deal. We went down that path already - trading future stars for part time platoon help. Romero for Raburn - I might do that deal, although It'd probably backfire.
I would never advocate giving up on Saunders with nothing better to try. I think he is better than the other remaining OF options beyond Jones. The rest are all useless to me. Romero...not buying it. Gillespie...had high hopes but looks AAAA, Avery...meh...Almonte (fighting back vomit)...Hart can't stay in the OF...neither can Morrison...it's a real mess.
Not much help on the market either. FA next year is really, really bleak and nobody seems to make impactful deadline deals anymore, with the extra wildcard teams in the mix. Jack will have to find someone with surplus in the OF that they can live without and that is tough.
Wasn't it? Or at least he was Pitcher/OF in school, I think. But I might be messing that up with Adam Jones too.
Has your opinion changed on JJ the last couple days? Or are you just really REALLY down on Saunders?