The least Interesting Man in the World
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"He once beat Garry Kasparov at chess. Using his left hand."
Dr. D just watched a reality show in which a lady with a $175,000 budget shopped for houses. She wanted three bedrooms, two places to take a bath, stainless appliances, granite in the kitchen, a sun room, a spacious back yard, and a bird sanctuary for her telepathic parrot, who had final say over the purchase.
The Mariners wanted a right hand Master Blaster who could beat most lefties with his breath, and he had to play center field. To which we can confidently say, "?!"
Their budget was limited to relief pitchers from Boston College. Incredibly, they pulled this transaction off, and secured a Mark McLemore-class benchie at no cost to anybody, except Gordon Gross. Dr. D's awe knows no bounds.
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"He sent his checking account information to an email from Nigeria, and actually got his $400,000."
Some gambles are more realistic than others. In 2014, Ruggiano was expected to log a 20-20 season as a Baseball Prospectus "dollar-per-WAR" camouflage hero. But he suffered, in order:
- An ankle injury
- A hamstring injury
- A groin injury (compare the Dr. D chess injury above)
- Another ankle injury, requiring surgery
- A gruesome laceration of his finger, slamming down a checker in the clubhouse
- A hip-replacement procedure on his hopes to ever start in the major leagues
Yes, Dr. D did once injure himself at skittles chess (3 minutes per 60 moves). He triumphantly slammed down a Queen with sharp points on its crown .... and cut his middle finger. Let me digest that sentence for a second. I think we all know that captures the SSI experience on every possible level.
Here is one Fangraphs article, saying that Ruggiano is one of the 50 best outfielders on the planet, and here is another one saying he's one of the 40 best. Do we hear 20? Going ... going ...
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"He one experienced an awkward moment, just to see what it was like." (The biggest howler in the entire history of all Dos Equis shtick. C'mon. This amigo is a minimum of 70 years old.)
With his lifetime 26.1% strikeout rate, Justin Ruggiano experiences many awkward moments. Fortunately, we as fans do not, since he doesn't visibly shriek "f*##*$@" at the top of his lungs after every single one of them.
Enemy pitchers experience their share of awkward moments also, since Ruggiano has a homer-per-fly rate well over 15%. Brett Talley at Fangraphs said, if Ruggiano ever actually got 550+ at-bats, he'd be "shocked" if Ruggiano didn't hit 20+ homers.
Ruggiano's Expected Power Index (xPX), in years that his hamstring muscle didn't pull his groin muscle, is 150-160. The same as that of Nelson Cruz, Evan Gattis, and Kam Chancellor.
Since Ruggiano also walks a lot against lefties, his platoon slash line of .270/.330/.500 is comparable to that of both Cruz and Blackout. And Ruggiano is kinda fast!
See my second site, Detectovision, for this morning's noodlings on the idea that 20-20 is synonymous with "5 WAR." (Yes, really.)
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"He considers the practice of any skill to be a form of cheating."
Dos Equis quips lose their force if they have to be annotated after the joke, but I think the idea here is that Tux-with-no-Tie Grampa has actual talent. The 2014 Mariner scrubeenies did not:
| Player | Times in Batter's Box | WAR |
| Romero | 190 | -1.2 |
| Hart | 255 | -1.2 |
| Jones | 328 (put a bullet in my head) | -1.0 |
| Kendrys | 239 | -0.9 |
| Smoak | 276 | -0.3 |
| Denorfia (the name shoulda tipped you off) | 90 | -0.3 |
| Gillespie | 78 | -0.2 |
| Endy | 258 |
-0.1 |
| Buck | 92 | -0.1 |
| Iwakuma | 6 | 0.0 |
| Total | 2,051 | -5.3 WAR |
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Two. Thousand.
Please don't let me wake up from my general anesthesia next time. Please.
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Meanwhile, Justin Ruggiano has +4.4 WAR in 1,200 career AB's.
Plus WAR, not minus WAR. It doesn't look like much, but when you draw that little vertical jot-and-tittle over the MINUS SIGN, YOU'RE LIABLE TO NOT MISS THE PLAYOFFS BY ONE BLINKIN' GAME AND BE DECLARED THE LEAST IN THE KINGDOM OF BUD.
Ruggiano has averaged 2.2 WAR per full season. Steven Souza is projected to 2.4 WAR in fulltime play next season. Ruggiano's 2.2 WAR per season is not based on play targeted against LHP's.
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You could take it from there. But like Pete Carroll, Dr. D believes in piling on. Did you know the 116-win Mariners had ten (10) different position players at 2 WAR or more. Mark McLemore and Stan Javier had 3.5 and 2.6 WAR, respectively, off the bench.
Ruggiano might only nab 1 or 2 WAR, in 250 at-bats, and this is entirely uninteresting. But hey. Going from -1.5 WAR to +1.5 WAR is supposed to be three wins. Same as Melky.
Going from -5.3 WAR to +1.5 WAR would be the same as Mike Trout. Zduriencik's Stars were willing, but his Scrubs were weak. Hopefully that was the phase right before the "MOST interesting man in the world" phase, that referring to Best Case Brad Miller in Best Case Game 7.
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"He went to a tennis match once and John McEnroe did not throw his racket."
No word on whether Jay-Z commands similar respect. But he did say, vis-a-vis Ruggiano, "we'd been looking at this for a while and we decided to pull the trigger." Yes, you can take that for what it is: Disgust with the Atlanta Braves. Dr. Defecate would have put it less delicately: "eliminate or get off the pot, there, John. This ain't ESPN."
So the Mariners perch themselves even higher in the catbird's seat. Ruggiano/Logo for RF might be plenty to boss the AL West, in view of the gasp-inducing pitching staff. And if a Churchill "better than Upton" tweet were to jell in the future, so much the better.
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Be Afraid,
Dr D