ports often confuses them. However, they are in fact two different people and as such only one of them can start at Shortstop each game.So, when a coworker sparked my curiosity by suggesting that the M’s should keep playing Josh instead of Jack, I decided to take a look at the two of them more closely. I wanted to see who deserves to get the most playing time, whenever Jack makes it back to the big leagues.
Let’s start by breaking down each player’s bio a little bit. First the veteran, Jack Wilson, is 32 years old and loves the city of Pittsburgh. His undying love for the city is grounded in the fact that he played his first 9 major league seasons for the Pirates. He has accumulated 4487 major league at-bats and is a career 0.268 hitter with a 0.374 slugging percentage good for a wRC+ of 80 (See Sabermetrics Library for definition, but know 100 is average) or roughly 20% below average. Jack is probably best known for his great defensive play at shortstop. According to Fangraphs, he has a UZR/150 (an advance statistic that tells the number of runs a player saves adjusted for a 150 game season) of 5.1 for his career. For comparison Omar Vizquel has a UZR/150 of 8.7 for his career and Yuniesky Betancourt has a UZR/150 of -8.3.
Josh Wilson is the younger of the two at only 29 years old. Josh has never been able to secure a regular spot in the big leagues. Not in this order, but, he has played for Tampa Bay, Seattle, San Diego, Arizona, Florida, and Washington. Josh has racked up 591 career major league at-bats. In those at-bats he has a career 0.240 batting average and a 0.345 slugging percentage. This all adds up to a wRC+ of 73 or 27% below average offense. Jo Wil’s defense is measured at a UZR/150 of -7.9 for his career.
So, now you are probably saying, “Great I know all about there career but what does that tell me about this year?” Well you antsy pants I was just about to get to that. This year Jack Wilson (the old Pirate) has compiled a 0.253 AVG, a 0.347 SLG, a wRC+ of 62 and a UZR/150 of -10.6. He did all that in the 25 games before he got injured. Really, this is not a very good line. The defense is especially bad; it is far below the high caliber that had come to be expected of Jack.
Meanwhile, Josh Wilson has put up a 0.299 AVG, a 0.411 SLG, a wRC+ of 117 and a UZR/150 of 7.7 in a total of 31 games. These are much better numbers. The question is can Josh keep up this kind of rate over the full season? The defense is gold glove level. If he can maintain this pace he would become a breakout player. However, based on career numbers I would say we can expect him to regress.
When Jack Wilson is fully recovered from his injury the Mariners will have to decide who will get the majority of the playing time at short. The debate is should it be the proven veteran or the guy who is performing right now. I would say the Mariners should keep riding the hot streak of Josh Wilson. They should get as much out of him as they can. The key will be to successfully determine if and when he is regressing back to his career norms and reducing his at-bats at that point.
Sources: Fangraphs, Sabermetrics Library
If Mike Sweeney's starts taught us nothing, it is that Wakamatsu is a slave to hot streaks, even when they aren't real and the batter is in fact 1 for 14. Expect JoWil to play until he's batting around .200. Though, knowing Wak, he may just try to screw with us and play the Squirrel instead.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with you that Wak loves spring training stats and hot streaks, but I think playing was his only real choice. Who else was going to DH, Tui? Tui sucks worse then Sweeney.
ReplyDeleteWell there is always an option to sign any useful player still available such as jermaine dye, and we always could have signed oh say... jim thome? but oh well.
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