some random notes on the phillies

Delmon Young was an MVP for the Detroit Tigers in the 2012 Playoffs, but they used him as a DH.  He cannot play everyday in the National League, where every player has to field a position.

Adding some random notes on the abysmal, awful Delmon Young:

1)  my son and I went to the ballgame recently, and as great as Dominic Brown was, that was how comically awful Delmon Young was, attempting to field balls in RF.  He misjudged routine flyballs that went over his head and clanked off the base of the fence which beerleague softball players could have caught, he ran bad routes to routine fly balls, balls clanked off his glove, he has the fielding range of a musk ox, and while he does have a cannon for an arm, he has no idea where the cutoff man is or what base to throw to on any given play.  He is the worst major league OF we have ever seen, and we include in that list Greg Luzinski and Pat Burrell, who were both pretty limited in their abilities to play the field.  Delmon Young is even worse than Lonnie "Skates" Smith.

2)  According to the Bill James Goldmine of 2010, Delmon Young has the highest percentage of swinging at all pitches thrown to him, 61%, of any batter currently playing in the major leagues with more than 1500 AB.   Delmon Young consistently, when you watch him, swings at the first pitch, at breaking balls that cannot be hit, and at high and low pitches that cannot be hit.  He seems not to be able to see the ball well or to time his swing.  He is a very impatient hitter.

3)  Delmon Young has an abysmal walk rate, his OBA is very very low and his slugging average is not so high as to offset it.  His career slugging is in the low .400s, and his career OBA is @ .310, so his OPS in RF comes in around .710 or so.  It's just not anywhere close to enough for a corner OF, and he's costing the Phillies tons of win shares because he's so bad at defense.

4)  According to the Bill James Goldmine of 2010, when Delmon Young was a fulltime Leftfielder with the Minnesota Twins (and LF is less challenging than RF), he had a typical Delmon Young year, with @.750 or so OPS.  But Delmon Young's overall Bill James Win Shares for 2009 were 7, compared with Michael Cuddyer, who can field and can hit much better and takes a walk, who had 21 win shares.  Nick Punto, who can field and can't hit at all, had 11 win shares for the Twins that year.  In short, Delmon Young is not a very good player.  His awful defense and awful walk rates, and his awful tendency to swing at everything, destroy his value as a player and cost his team wins.

5) On top of all this, Delmon Young led the 2009 Minnesota Twins in grounding into Double Plays.  Delmon Young is a huge out machine--the outs he makes when he's not hitting his 12 or 15 home runs, and the runs he costs you with his awful glove, limited range and bad baseball IQ in the field--all cost the team that plays him many more runs than he can possibly produce with his bat.

6)  Quantifying this is easy.  Delmon Young in roughly one month of regular play was minus one WAR--he was costing the Phillies one win less than what a replacement level minor leaguer or major leaguer would have been expected to produce in RF.  Over the course of a season, Delmon Young is costing the Phillies six wins a year.  The Phillies should cut Delmon Young and replace him with anyone else.  The wisest move would be a platoon of Laynce Nix and John Mayberry--Nix is an excellent fielder, and Mayberry destroys lefthanders.  Mayberry is not a great fielder, but he's much better than the awful Delmon Young.

7) On top of all the foregoing, Delmon Young had an awful incident a year or two back where, arrested for DUI, he was heard to speak in foul language and utter anti-semitic and homophobic slurs.   While we might overlook a great athlete's faults, Delmon Young is not a great athlete, and all things being equal, I and my Jewish and LBGT friends would rather not have a guy like Delmon Young around at all in our ballparks.

Arthur J Kyriazis
June 13, 2013

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