Welcome to another in the ongoing Roster Watch series here on TiGO. Today we cover another guy that splits the Yinzer/Blogger divide Garrett Jones.
Yinzer’s love Jones. His power, his size, his hustle, the fact he appears to be a good locker room guy.
Bloggers kind of dislike Jones. His splits, his defense.
To be fair, bloggers don’t hate Jones in the way they hate Josh Harrison. I haven’t seen any bloggers that think Jones is completely worthless, just that he is no more than a replacement player. His career stats really show how extreme he is in regards to this argument.
| Split | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs RHP as LHB | 1411 | 394 | 92 | 6 | 71 | 222 | 156 | 306 | .279 | .348 | .504 | .852 |
| vs LHP as LHB | 470 | 93 | 23 | 1 | 16 | 57 | 24 | 120 | .198 | .237 | .353 | .590 |
He has very clearly struggled against left handed pitchers. A common misconception with Jones is that he didn’t struggle against lefties last season. It’s led to some on message boards, Twitter, and radio to call for him to have a full-time job. I’m not sure why that opinion is out there. He was a bit better against lefties than usual but only two of his twenty seven homers came against lefties. Despite an increased batting average against them, his bat was still way below average against lefties. He has just never been competent against left handed pitchers.
Here are his 2012 splits.
| Split | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | RBI | BB | SO | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs RHP as LHB | 401 | 116 | 26 | 3 | 25 | 76 | 28 | 90 | .289 | .332 | .556 | .888 |
| vs LHP as LHB | 74 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 5 | 13 | .189 | .235 | .297 | .532 |
As you can pretty clearly see, he still has massive problems in that department.
Jones is arbitration eligible this year and the Pirates did tender him an offer. He made $2.25 million dollars last year and is estimated to makes around $4.5 million this year. That makes him a great candidate for a trade. The Pirates have a pretty big aversion to paying guys in arbitration, and have basically started to hoard 1b/OF types.
Now. Jones had a great year last season. That was after two so-so seasons. He is a sub-standard defender and a pretty clear platoon player. What should the Pirates do with him?
Keep him of course. There are very few sure things on this roster. The Pirates have really built the outfield by throwing shit against the wall and hoping something sticks. Out of the options they have Garrett Jones is the only one approaching any type of sure thing. So you use him correctly, platooning him with Sanchez, maybe letting him bat against some lefties but giving the majority of those chances to Gaby Sanchez.
Unless someone really breaks out there is no one to replace his production this year. You probably already missed selling high, so you just have to see how the team is doing at the trading benchmarks and respond accordingly.
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Roster Watch: A.J. Burnett
Roster Watch: Jeff Clement
Roster Watch: Kevin Correia
Roster Watch: Chase d’Arnaud
Roster Watch: Eric Fryer
Roster Watch: Jason Grilli
Roster Watch: Matt Hague
Roster Watch: Joel Hanrahan and Brock Holt
Roster Watch: Josh Harrison
Roster Watch: Jared Hughes
