But he's a 1B/DH type for us. RF as needed. Granted, his avg. HR in '13 traveled 9 ft less than Ramirez's and 10 ft less than Kemp's (only 3 ft less than Van Slyke's) but on the other hand he's a high average guy who walks, too.
His average homer traveled only 4 ft less than Encarnacion's, btw. We would love to get him.
Man Matt, you're ruling out Sandoval, Posey, Donaldson and David Wright as bats that could "power thru" Safeco. Their average ball speed and distance wasn't much better than Craig's.
You're talking about a guy who hit .300, Home and Away, from '11-'13, hits lefties and righties, and is relatively cheap.
And his average ball speed (in '13) was more than Zunino's last year. Zuny handled Safeco (power-wise) just fine. 10 of his 22 homers were at home.
Granted, I would love to have Stanton's or Trout's ball speed.....but it isn't readily available.
I love Iwakuma and his Shuuto, but away from Safeco he becomes pretty close to a league average pitcher. His career Away WHIP is 1.213, his K/BB is 3.17, and he gets hit to the tune of .251-.301-.402. League batting averages last year were 1.284, 2.65 and .252-.316-.390 (which does include Safeco...a whopping 1/15th of the sample....and it also include Seattle's dismal bats).
OK, Iwakuma is a known (nice) thing and Craig is a risk. But we have arms and we don't have RH bats. At some piont you have to roll the dice on getting one or two......either cash-wise or trade-wise.
I think I would do this one, knowinly rolling the dice, and having the $ resources for another bat.
Thanks for the insight, as always.
moe
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