5 August 2008: Shoulder Woes

Tuesday, August 05 2008 @ 09:10 AM EDT

Contributed by: Pistol

Doc was in control again.  Jays win 6-1.

In other news Scott Rolen is going to be on a regular rest schedule to help his shoulder.

Who would have thought a player with shoulder problems who has been declining since he entered his 30s would be struggling this year at the plate?

 
Year Games Abs Ave OBP SLG OPS
2002 55 205 0.278 0.354 0.561 0.915
2003 154 559 0.286 0.382 0.528 0.910
2004 142 500 0.314 0.409 0.598 1.007
2005 56 196 0.235 0.323 0.383 0.706
2006 142 521 0.296 0.369 0.518 0.887
2007 112 392 0.265 0.331 0.398 0.729
2008 84 303 0.254 0.347 0.409 0.756

You could probably show 2002-2007 to someone that knows nothing about baseball and say here's the past 6 years.  Based on that what would you expect for 2008?  And they probably would have come up with something closer to actuality than Ricciardi.

Rolen is a little bit below the three year average from 2005-2007 (.774 OPS in the NL).  That's probably a safe bet going forward, and probably declining as the years go on.

At the time the trade was made I wasn't too happy about it either.  From January of this year:

My initial reaction is the Jays are trading for the:
And on top of all of that, the Cardinals are essentially dumping Rolen because he can't get along with LaRussa. Then the Cardinals got a concession from Glaus to make the deal (whether that's a good idea is another issue).

This deal only makes sense if one thinks that Rolen can overcome his shoulder problems. I'm skeptical about that. After a strong 2006 you'd think he'd be pretty healthy coming into 2007 and yet he slugged under .400 every month except July and then had surgery again.
And remember, Ricciardi said one of the benefits of the trade was that they have Rolen for two more years (at $11 million/year) whereas they'd probably lose Glaus after this season.

Between Rolen, Overbay and Stairs, the players occupying power positions on a typical team, the Jays have 26 HRs and a .410 Slg% in 284 games this season.  That's 5 less than Adam Dunn has by himself.  That's probably the biggest reasons the Jays hover around .500 - they're a team that's made up of an ace and a lot of complimentary players.

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