Interesting Doc. A Baseball-Reference check shows that Ichiro was on first base nine more times (not counting FC's where he ended up on first) in 2010 than 2009. Those 9 times translated into 16 more steals. Could Figgins have influenced that? Probably.
However, Figgins Sept. performance is probably pretty typical of the best month in a season for a guy with Figgins overall stats. It sin't necessarily a harbinger of a much improved 2011.
my problem with Figgins remains that he has had two very nice seasons in the last five. Those two were powered by outlier type statistics in critical areas. in 2007 he had a BABIP that was completely beyond his norm and one that he will not approach again. It was .391, for goodness sakes! In '09 he had his 2nd best career BABAP (.356) AND his most walks in a season (101..27 more than this year, his second highest total).
I just don't see him duplicating any of those numbers. And so we're stuck with an $8M 80-90 OPS, average fielding 2B/3B.
That's a lot of clams that might be better spent elsewhere.
I've resigned myself to the fact that Z threw Wak under the bus to keep his $8M man. Compounding an error with another doesn't make the first decision any better.
Moe
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