Andruw Jones: All-Star to Replacement-Level Player
Andruw Jones was having a brilliant career, that is, until he turned 31 years old. Since that point, he’s barely been a league-average player. He went from an all-time great player, to an iffy hall-of-fame candidate.
Jones started his career off early and stook off. From age 19 to 30, he accumulated 69 WAR. His total is the 24th highest value. Here are the 10 players who had the closest WAR values to Jones before turning 31.
| Name | WAR |
| Barry Bonds | 74 |
| Rickey Henderson | 72 |
| Cal Ripken | 71 |
| Johnny Bench | 70 |
| Carl Yastrzemski | 70 |
| Andruw Jones | 69 |
| Al Kaline | 68 |
| Joe Jackson | 67 |
| Ron Santo | 67 |
| Arky Vaughan | 66 |
| Sherry Magee | 65 |
The list is full of players who had hall-of-fame careers. The problem with Jones is that his push for the Hall seems to have stagnated. Here’s a WAR comparison curve for Jones and for several other outfielders with similar cumulative WAR values at age 30 (big image).
Jones’s career has stagnated, compared to other players with similar careers. Since turning 31 years old, Jones has only produced 3.6 WAR combined in those five seasons. He produced more than that in every season from 1997 to 2007. Of all the hitters who have accumulated 60 or more WAR before their 31st birthday, he has the fewest WAR, with Ken Griffey Jr. the next closest.
| Name | WAR |
| Andruw Jones | 4 |
| Ken Griffey Jr. | 5 |
| Lou Boudreau | 7 |
| Albert Pujols | 8 |
| Arky Vaughan | 8 |
| Sherry Magee | 9 |
| Duke Snider | 10 |
| Johnny Bench | 11 |
| Ron Santo | 13 |
| Jimmie Foxx | 21 |
One possible cause for the sudden drop is that most of Jones’s production comes from playing great defense in center field. Thirty-eight percent of his value is tied up in his position and in defense. This percentage is the highest among all outfielders who have accumulated more than 20 WAR before reaching 31 years old. Quite a few players are ahead of him in percentage, but they are either catchers or middle infielders.
A few other outfielders are somewhat comparable with their center-field defense. Among them are Devon White, Kenny Lofton, Coco Crisp and Mike Cameron. Here is how each one has aged, according to their WAR (big image).
There’s not much of a comparison here. None of them plateau. They continued to be productive players well into their 30’s.
The main cause for Jones’s decline was that he’s been injured often. He experienced some nagging injuries in 2002 and 2003. And in 2007, he missed time because of an injured back, an elbow, a knee and general sickness. The injuries continued into 2008, and he went on the disabled list twice for knee injuries. Those injuries took away his most valuable asset: the ability to play great center-field defense.
I am not sure if Andruw Jones is a hall-of-famer. Some writers will determine that more than five years from now. But Jones’s production stagnation that started at age 31 is unprecedented for someone of his caliber.
Jeff, one of the authors of the fantasy baseball guide,The Process, writes for RotoGraphs, The Hardball Times, Rotowire, Baseball America, and BaseballHQ. He has been nominated for two SABR Analytics Research Award for Contemporary Analysis and won it in 2013 in tandem with Bill Petti. He has won four FSWA Awards including on for his Mining the News series. He's won Tout Wars three times, LABR twice, and got his first NFBC Main Event win in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @jeffwzimmerman.
Perhaps he was not actually 31 when he “turned 31”
This
perhaps he was on that syringe
It’s almost as if there was some kind of change in baseball riiiiight about the time he fell off a cliff in terms of both his production and ability to stay healthy. If only we had some clue as to what kind of thing he might have been doing which would allow his body to recover quickly, and also make him much stronger than he would be otherwise, which he stopped doing…
Andruw Jones career ISO = .274
Andruw Jones ISO last 4 years: .246, .255., .247, .238
Clearly he has nowhere near the power he used to…
That’s his BABIP. His career ISO is .232
Skip, is that you?
He looks like a steroid guy. He hit 51 home runs in 2005. Remember when George Foster was famous for that one year plateau? Perhaps we should be questioning Jones’ age and meds. He is so big and bulky now and it is just plain naive to think that that is the result of a normal aging process.
perhaps they’re all on steroids. if you have a chance to make $25 million instead of $20 million, $10 million instead of $2 million, or even $500K instead of $10 an hour, you would be stupid not to.
Maybe he has lupus
It’s never Lupus
Interesting how similar Jones and Griffey’s trajectories have been. Griffey accumulated WAR faster, but they both flatten out at the same age, with not that big of a difference in final career WAR. So is Griffey a hall of famer?
Nope. Because he clearly took steroids. How else can you explain that decline in production?
Age and injuries.
guessing the above poster is being sarcastic.
I would normally assume so, but if it is, the reply doesn’t fit with the original (which seems to be a serious question without any PED implication) and it’s not particularly witty or funny, not to mention it’s becoming harder and harder to recognize sarcasm with the proliferation of trolls and morons posting comments more fitting for HardballTalk or some other forum.
I took Urban Shocker’s post in context with the above comment thread where the accusation is made and repeated ad nauseum. In that context the post reads as sarcasm because (almost) no one accuses Griffey of using steroids yet the same evidence that he evinces is used to informally charge many other players.
The problem I have with baseless speculation, which this is, is that it always seems to be based on personal feelings towards the player in question, whether it is race, perceived attitude, nationality, physique*, or what team they played for. It is a good point that Jones and Jr. have very similar career trajectories (and very similar expanding waistlines), because one was likeable and the other wasn’t (or perhaps it was his foreign-ness), rampant speculation follows one but not the other. How has Buster Posey rocketed back to elite status so fast? How about David Wright and Adam Dunn’s resurgence? Derek Jeter’s longevity?
You’re perfectly welcome to accuse these guys or anyone of being roiders without a shred of real evidence, but it says more about you than them.
*While this one might seem legitimate at first blush, just look at the Mitchell Report. In fact, look at it in all it’s glory and notice the only thing all those guys had in common is they played baseball.
A 10 WAR difference is pretty big, especially when the lesser value is so defensively-based. I’m not sure how many other players accumulated 80 WAR in a 12-season stretch, but I doubt there are any non-HOF’ers who did.
The only eligible position player with 80 WAR total in his career who’s not in the Hall of Fame is Bill Dahlen.
The difference is 10 now, but if Jones plays for another 4 or 5 years, it’ll be less. I wouldn’t disagree with Griffey getting in and Jones not. But it’s interesting to see how small the difference actually is between the two, at least according to WAR
To JimNYC…
Bill Dahlen made 86 errors as a ss in 1895. Totally different times and situation but… wow.
I love how the rest of the commentators just persume Andruw was on roids because of declining production. Thats classy, guilty until proven innocent I guess.
And ignore the fact that plenty of guys are still using roids, or do these people not read newspapers? Seriously, if Jones were a roider, he probably would have kept roiding.
Jones’ power numbers 2009-12 are actually quite good (his ISO in each of those 4 years is higher than his career average) It’s his K rate, BABIP (neither of which were ever good), platoon status, and lack of premier defensive value that have made him a mediocre player. But, sure, continue to believe he must be a cheater. He is foreign and dark-skinned after all.
How, exactly, does one PROVE that he DIDN’T take PEDs? Assumed guilty and UNABLE to prove innocence is the reality.
In the US legal system, the prosecutor (steroid accusations) have to prove they are right whereas the defendant only has to prove its possible the prosecutor isn’t right. If there is no evidence either way, then innocent.
No, you’re not serious, since the courtroom procedures of the American legal system don’t govern all rational consideration of guilt and innocence.
As long as there isn’t a holier-than-thou moral component to the PED speculation, I see nothing wrong with it. The subject is Andruw Jones’ career trajectory, and his career falls off a cliff around the time when MLB started testing for PED’s. One could argue that it’s neglectful NOT to consider this.
You see nothing wrong with baselessly accusing someone of being a cheater and probably a criminal, too? Okay, SAS is a bugger and doesn’t pay his taxes. He also drives slowly in the left lane and rips the tags off his matresses.
I believe the testing really started in 2005, when he posted his best year. His career didn’t fall off a cliff, I believe he developed a pronounced upper cut in his swing, resulting in an increase in FB% and HRs and corresponding decline in BABIP%. His HR/FB% numbers are consistent. My opinion is he’s just gotten old and out of shape.
To TKDC,
I’m not adding the pejoratives of “cheater” and “criminal,” you are, and I’m not in a position to punish Jones, nor am I suggesting Jones should be punished. I’m just saying it’s fair, if we’re doing an analysis, to factor in what we know about what was going on in the sport during Jones’ career. And the accusation isn’t baseless. Jones was on a certain trajectory that precipitously dropped around the same time that PED testing began in MLB. It could certainly be a coincidence, but I do think there’s a basis for speculation there. Do I need a positive drug test to speculate about why Bonds was such an outlier in his late 30’s?
Since buying illegal drugs is a crime and using them was cheating during Jones’ entire career, speculating about him using steroids is speculating about him being a cheater and a criminal. But I do appreciate you letting me know that you are not in a position to punish Jones. That was really weighing on my mind.
People who want to brand someone a cheater will use any trajectory or arc that occurs to bolster their position. Played well through your 30s? You must be cheating. Fell off in your 30s? You must have been cheating and stopped. Had some great years and some mediocre years? Must be cheating some of the time.
If 2006 Andruw Jones was Roiding Jones and 2008 Andruw Jones was Non-roiding Jones, wouldn’t it behoove him to roll the dice? If he were a roider in the past, it would not be a moral question, but a rational question.
And comparing Jones and Bonds is ridiculous. Bonds was convicted in a criminal court for lying about knowingly using roids. When Jones is thrown in jail for using roids, I promise I won’t defend him.
I only said that I’m not in a position to punish Jones because you insist on adding the shaming words of “criminal” and “cheater” to the discussion. I suppose I should add that I don’t believe in the criminalization of drugs, and that I think the use of PED’s was tacitly accepted throughout the game prior to the current testing regime, so I don’t attach any particularly strong moral judgment to guys who may have used prior to the current regime.
And I’m inviting you and other analysts to join me, and allow ourselves to consider the role PED’s may have played in a player’s career, with the understanding that we are not passing moral judgment on the behavior. Much in the same way that I might want to assess a songwriter’s work while under the influence of illegal drugs without feeling like I’m calling him or her a “criminal” or “cheater.”
I think this is a fair approach, and more honest than simply ignoring the possibility of steroid use completely when we know many players were using.
SAS sounds like someone being perfectly reasonable and TKDC is the one getting a little pissy and snarky, so kind of disappointing to see TKDC getting the +1s.
@SAS,
Except you’re ignoring the premise of TKDC’s assertions: that a questionable career trajectory is very poor evidence that someone may or may not have been on the juice. In fact, it’s really no evidence at all. Essentially, he’s accusing of using faulty logic, which I don’t disagree with.
The fact that someone may have been using PEDs is a legitimate discussion topic, when it’s warranted. You have done very little to convince anyone that it’s warranted in this case, hence the criticism.
Why research this when you can make baseless speculations about forged birth certificates and steroids?
Further contextual evidence for sarcasm.
I’m going to have trouble keeping articles you’ve written with those of Jeff Sullivan straight.
FanGraphs, 2013: brought to you by Jeff Cameron, Jeff Petti, Jeff Swydan, Jeff Remington, Jeff Woodrum, Jeff Appelman, Jeff Klaasen, Jeff Sarris, Jeff Hulet, Jeff Seidman, Jeff Newman, and Carson Cistulli.
Isn’t that Carson Jefftulli?
You forgot about me.
I love when I get to see Barry Bonds compared to other great players. Its there to remind us, ‘holy crap Barry Bonds’
You can see the year Bonds started taking steroids. Age 35. At 34 he starts to slow down similar to Rickey. Then he explodes and increases his career WAR by over 50% from 35 to 42.
“You can see the year Bonds started taking steroids.”
Ahhh, if only it were that easy…
I love how his SLG and ISO numbers literally go off the charts starting around age 35.
You can see the year Bonds started taking steriods. Age 29. He sets a career high in HR, beating his old mark by 12.
Yeah, but his peak at age 27-28 doesn’t come close to his peak at age 36-39.
Sometimes sarcasm is sadly misdirected.
Considering he’s a platoon guy now, it’s unlikely he improves the WAR total much more before retiring.
Maybe he should get checked out for valley fever.
Breaking news alert!!!
His BABIP is second lowest of any player with at least 1000 PAs 2009-12, behind only Rod Barahas.
He’s also behind Rod Barajas.
I’m going to claim that was just a typo, and not retardation, but I’m not certain.
I don’t understand the guys chirping steroids. How did steroids improve his ability to put up ridiculous UZR numbers? Do steroids improve speed and agility? His ability to get reads off the bat? His ability to hit RHPs?
He has a career 112 wRC+. As stated his defense is clearly responsible for the bulk of his value.
Some questions to consider:
Has the increase in strikeout rate in baseball caused outfielders production to go down due to lack of opportunities?
Has his fielding value been hurt since the decline of bulky power-hitting outfielders and the rise of light hitting defense-first outfielders risen the overall standard for outfielders in the game?
Is it just injuries and his inability to hit RHPs has kept him off the field?
It’s probably a combination of several things that add up to his skill-set not aging well.
I’m not arguing that he did or did not take steroids, but yes steroids or PEDs in general can improve speed and agility. At least by allowing you to recover faster, and therefore be fresher throughout a season, and at best by building the muscles that lead to speed and agility. You probably would take what Mark McGwire took, but there is something out there that will make you faster and more agile.
Awful. Stop posting.
Given the number of track athletes, including sprinters, who’ve been caught using PED’s, it’s safe to say they improve speed. I’m not saying that PED’s account for Jones’ former defensive prowess, but saying PED’s don’t make you faster can’t be part of your argument.
Your questions to consider are very interesting. There’s a lot of talk about how the league environment changes for hitters and pitchers, but I don’t know that I’ve heard it talked about with regard to fielders. Not sure how relevant it is to Jones, necessarily, but interesting.
I’m not too knowledgeable about PEDs and certainly not trying to argue either way about them. More like I’m trying to understand why people are making the argument that he did take PEDs. Usually I think of power numbers, and his ISO certainly hasn’t gone anywhere.
My argument is that his relative fielding value has diminished thanks to the improvements of other outfielders and inability to get enough opportunities in the field. When was the last time he even played CF? A 112 wRC+ only goes so far as a platoon LFer.
Safe to say looking at numbers won’t tell you one way or the other. For any improvement of performance there will always be multiple plausible explanations. Perhaps, Bonds career trajectory is impossible without steroids, but other players seem to have played very well into their 40s without steroids (emphasis on seem of course).
The naivete of the baseball world during the steroids era was not that individual players’ stats showed signs of steroid use and were ignored but that the entire game had changed and no one wondered how.
Steroids is such an awful phenomenon in sports. So alienating.
I still think he’s a HOF’er. By many accounts the best defensive CFer of all-time and will end up with 450+ HRs.
BWA rewards the rare few they deem to be the greatest defensively at their position.
As any other team had 5 hofers on their roster right in their prime? Glavine, Maddux, Smoltz, Chipper and potentially Andruw. 90s was a good time to grow up a Braves fan.
“90s was a good time to grow up a Braves fan.”
Until the postseason, anyway…
Really? I know it sucks to lose the World Series but making it is the sign of a pretty successful playoff team (even pre-LDS), and the Braves made it in ’91, ’92, ’95, ’96, and ’99. That’s more than half of the WSs for the decade. There were plenty of teams in those years that had good seasons and lost to the Braves in the postseason. The ’90s Braves were not as successful as the ’90s Yankees in the postseason, but those Yankees teams are not a good yard-stick for postseason success. They are the zenith, but surely there is space between the zenith and the nadir.
Oh I don’t disagree at all – I would love, love, LOVE for my favorite team to be in the postseason year in and year out. It was truly a remarkable run. I was just pointing out that all the appearances didn’t translate to a lot of WS titles, but at least they were there and had a shot.
’27 Yanks: Ruth, Gehrig, Combs, Lazzeri, Hoyt, Pennock, all Hall of Famers. Plus Urban Shocker who is almost, maybe a borderline candidate (and Fangraphs commenter, apparently).
’04 Yanks: A-Rod, Jeter, Mo, and possibly Mussina and Brown.
Damn Yankees.
Kevin Brown was 39 in 2004.
And off the HOF ballot already, I believe (although woefully underappreciated, I also believe).
Yeah, OK. Brown was a stretch.
By the way, the ultimate HOF team is the ’31 Yanks. I count 9 HOFers all playing at a high level. Some weren’t in their primes, though. Babe Ruth, for example, was “only” worth 11 WAR.
5 HOFers in their prime on their team at the same time, that is.
Jones has had a hall of fame career but I don’t think he gets in simply because he has been hanging around too long. He is going on 5 seasons of being a marginal platoon/ bench player and he is still only 35
Anyone who thinks Andruw Jones is best ever defensive CF, never saw Willie Mays play.
By the way, fangraph accountants, does Andruw Jones hold the record for biggest drop in salary (for players that kept playing of course) from one year to the next? He went from about$15 mil to $500k in one year.
Well, I’m pretty sure that the Dodgers paid him more the next few years in guaranteed money after releasing him than he made from the teams for which he played. So are we counting that or not?
Pretty sure Roger Clemens went from something like $20 million plus one year, to retired the next.
And they never saw Fielder Jones play.
I mean this literally. Anybody who saw Fielder Jones play is dead.
And also won’t get off Hurtlockertwo’s lawn.
Or Garry Maddox.
He should be DFA’d because he sucks.
It’s really easy to eat garbage all day and barely work out and stay in shape when you’re 21 or 22. It takes a little more work when you’re 30.
0.8 WAR in a little less than half a season is not replacement level, it’s league average. Misleading article title is misleading.
haven’t the andruw jones falsified age rumors been following him for pretty much his whole career?
Ah yes, cynicism at its best. Anyone who has a jump in home runs must have been on roids. Please, stop being pessimistic and start being realistic. You have no basis for your argument on him using steroids. The home runs don’t mean anything considering he hit 30 home runs multiple times along with him being in his prime. He always had great power.
However, Andruw Jones was one of the most idiotic hitters I’ve seen when he was with the Braves(haven’t really kept up with his progress since). Especially the last 3 years in his career there. He hit some homeruns but he wasn’t all that much great for anything else offensively. He had some decent plate discipline but struck out way too much. Not to mention the fact that he personally decided to go all out or nothing when it came to home runs in those last 3 years. You can tell by his BABIP. The drop in it is ridiculous not only because of the home runs but because he tried too hard to hit them. I can’t tell you how many times I saw him induce a lazy pop up because he swung like an idiot.
Defensively, that’s a completely different story. Forget the statistics for a second, he’s a top 3 defensive centerfielder regardless. Anyone who says differently is insane. He made everything look easy and never looked like he went all out even though he did. Ask that great pitching staff while Andruw was patrolling the outfield, they’ll tell you and they owe quite a lot to him. He’s the greatest defensive centerfielder in my honest opinion.
Andruw had much more talent at the plate than the numbers indicate in his prime, he simply never learned to lay off the low and away slider. It was a huge hole in his swing. I also don’t think he’s really his listed age, I would bet good money he’s a year or two older than what he’s listed now. The aging curve and sudden decline make much more sense if he’s really 32 or 33 at the time of his downfall.
AJ is the best defensive centerfielder of the modern era and there is really no one in his category. He had amazing instincts and an uncanny ability to be right where the ball was going to be hit.
In the search for explanations, I think people are focusing too much on steroids and not enough on cheeseburgers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the cheeseburgers made in the US were on WADA’s banned substances list.
+1
Pretty sad that one of the points for a player’s HOF candidacy is “he was injured all the time, so you know he wasn’t taking PED’s.”
As a Braves fan, I look at that and notice that he fell off a cliff right after he left the Braves.
Clearly, of course, this is merely evidence that all the Braves were juicing.
His last season in Atlanta was pitiful. That was where he fell off the cliff.
Fangraphs commenters are worse than ESPN commenters when it comes to P”E”Ds.
He also hasn’t kept himself in the greatest of shape, carrying extra weight. He was substantially overweight a few years back. Much better today, but still carrying a few excess pounds.
Perhaps it was drugs but not the performance enhancing kind. He was top few dozen in the game and then, the next season (in LA), the worst player in baseball. And then he was decent again. Reminds me of Andre Agassi, although Dodgers Andruw was too fat for it to be meth. Not saying he was into the Performance Inhibiting Drugs, but that’s the sort of thing that can explain such a rapid decline.
Wasn’t he named on the Mitchell report, just like many others who have declined since it came out?
Shocking
He was a juicer and loved the strip clubs in the ATL
Think differently? Im not surprised, and I do get a kick out of some people trying to use capital case law in determining it. Small claims court requires more likely than not, so spare us the court case garbage.
It took me about 15 seconds with google to discover that no, <a href=http://files.mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf"he was not named in the Mitchell report.
But then, never let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
I’m pretty sure, being a legal scholar, that the distinction you meant is not between capital case law and small claims court. I’m not even sure I know what the first one is if its not law having to do with applying the death penalty, which is way too specific for your point. You probably just meant the distinction between criminal trial rules and civil trial rules. But in both cases the burden of proof is on the prosecution/plaintiff; the burden is just less in civil cases.
As for the more likely than not bit, isn’t that satisfied by Jones’s being an MLB player during the steroid era? Heck, if Conte is right it is nearly satisfied by being an MLB player right now. Since we can’t use that standard to discriminate among players and any other evidence bears multiple plausible explanations, I doubt we have good reason to think of Jones in particular that he used steroids. We have just as much reliable evidence that David Eckstein used steroids, namely he was an MLB player who had a peak and then lost it.
At any rate, as I said above, the rules of the court don’t govern general reasoning. It is silly to invoke them as such and, so, silly to invoke them as a rebuttal.
After looking through Jones’ stats, no major stats REALLY have changed since his prime years. His LD% is around the same, HR/FB is around the same, his ISO is around the same, OBP the same, wRC+ the same, GB% and FB% are all the same as well. I may have found out why he’s declined so rapidly, because his numbers suggest he’s still the same in his limited AB’s. Here’s what I have:
He cannot his righties for his life and he doesn’t get enough AB’s.
Those are the only 2 reasons that I see for his sharp decline in stats, but really he simply does not get enough playing time because he has gotten quite a bit chunkier and slower since he last stole 9 bags for the white sox in 2010. With that lack of speed and lack of ability to hit right handed pitching, he’s become pretty much a pinch hit/platoon player in the majors.
If you look at his stats, however, one can see that he hasn’t been THAT awful. Give him his normal 600 AB’s in a year and in the past 4 “decline” years he would have had 30+ homers in each of the seasons that he played. Now while that doesn’t take into account that he has hit just barely above the mendoza line against righties the past 3 years (.208 to be exact), but also, in the said last 3 years he has 29 homers, compared to 20 against lefties in roughly 80 more at bats.
So with all this in consideration, he really hasn’t been as bad as people give him credit for (besides his Dodger year, that was atrocious) and he just has not gotten enough playing time with the teams he’s been on due to his most likely lack of defense. I’m sure if someone in the past 3 years would have given him 600 AB’s there’s a chance he could have hit 30+ homers and this article would not need to have been made.
Oh and whoever thinks he took roids is kinda crazy. All of his power numbers are near identical now to when they were in his prime. He was just a really strong uppercut swing player who put literally ALL of his weight into the pitches that he hit, sometimes falling to the ground after crushing a ball, something that, on rare occasions, can be seen today while he plays for the yanks.
From 2003-2007, his FB% was about ~ 41-42%.
2009-present is ~46%.
There is an uptick, and 2009, 2010, and 2012 are his three highest rates that fangraphs can find. So he’s definitely putting the ball in the air more. His IFFB% is up as well, albeit not much.
Why did his batting average drop off significantly if his batting profile stayed the same? This leads me to believe the 5% increase in FB% means something.
Career-wise, the difference between his hitting RHP and LHP isn’t big, and only started in the past three years. In fact, remove his last three seasons, and he’s a better career hitter versus righties than lefties. Odd.
What we do know:
– He lost the ability to hit for average
– Speed vanished
– Got Fat
Why is everyone so quick to silence those who claim steroids? It’s a valid thought, not a definite, but a definite possibility. Isn’t this what comment sections are for? To speculate?
My speculation:
I think Roids.
Everyone seems to point out that his power didn’t vanish. It didn’t, but all of the sudden he lost the ability to hit for a decent average. That doesn’t tend to fit in the with the usual aging, does it? Don’t older players keep their contact skills, but lose power over time? And why did he lose his contact skills in the middle of his prime?
My theory is that Jones had to try harder to achieve his previous power levels (to say, it wasn’t “easy power” anymore). He has to over-swing.
Next I wonder about his speed. A lot of similar body types in that era who could all run but don’t really exist now in 2012. A-Rod, Guerrero, Jones, all guys who could run while having very large bodies. Heck, even Derrick Lee, Alphonso Soriano, Beltran, Abreu. Big hulking guys who could really fly. Very few of those anymore. Conseco as well.
Last point: When you get off roids, all of the previous muscle turns to fat, doesn’t it (please educate me if I’m misinformed). Andruw, int he course of what it seems like 1 offseason, got fat. Went from a muscular build to bulky, in the middle of his prime.
I don’t really care if Andruw did, or didn’t. He played the best CF I ever saw, and was an extremely entertaining player for me to watch. Thank you for those great years Andruw.
As well, I don’t understand how people seem to think they know how he got fat for a fact.
I would imagine that his drop in batting average is due to him swinging for the fences more. Every since he hit 51 homers in 2005, he seemed to start to swing more for the fences. I remember watching him in 2007 and his swing looked flat out awful fairly often. It was violent and looked like he was about to screw himself into the ground. Looking at his swing, it’s really no wonder why he only hit .222 that season. Every since that 51 homer season, including that season, his BABIP has dropped substantially.
As for him getting fat, I think it wasn’t that surprising, at least not to Braves fans I would imagine. From what I can remember, Andruw was always known for having bad eating habitats. I’d say most Braves fans thought he’d end up fat if he didn’t change his eating habitats, and that’s what happened. There’s only so long you can go eating like he did without starting to gain weight. Age just caught up with him.
Is it just me, or has the possibility of steroids made people forget that athletes naturally lose speed as they age because their muscles stop recovering and healing as well as they used to?
The point here is not that steroids isn’t a possibility, but rather that all of the purported armchair evidence for it is ambiguous between steroid and non-steroid explanations. Possible exceptions here are Canseco, Bonds, McGwire, and others who looked like professional entertainment wrestlers. But even then I’m not sure our certainty isn’t because they confessed or have hard evidence linking them to steroids.
If all the evidence is ambiguous, then saying you think its steroids is just a choice but not a reasonably formed belief. The right attitude to take is withholding judgment on the question. But, of course, this is one of the things that makes steroids in sports so alienating to fans.
It’s a place for comments. If I had to guess, I’d say Roids. I don’t know 100%, nor claim to. But this is a place for discussion.
If it’s really just “a place for comments,” why are you still trying to so hard to fight for the legitimacy of your comments? Make them and move on. No one has to accept the premise of your comments, and clearly many don’t. Does that make their comments any less legitimate than yours? What is this obsession of keep pointing out that “it’s a place for comments”?
Was he on roids? Who knows? Why assume he is, based on absolutely nothing? He was a young, fleet footed player when he came up. Toward the last few years in his time in Atlanta his play was altered and he turned into a complete masher — 2005. Yes he had some good homer years before, but after 2005 he went all out on every swing trying to pull a home run. Combine that with gaining weight at a rather rapid rate for a centerfielder, and it is pretty clear to see why he struggled. Maybe performance enhancing drugs furthered his struggles, but you don’t need to look any deeper than what I just explained to see why his performance dropped.
I don’t think he’ll even get close to getting in. Most of his value is tied up in defense which is underappreciated by Hall voters (people don’t buy UZR in general and thus discount its WAR contribution). He doesn’t have alot of the statistical milestones that many look at. He doesn’t have the awards to get him on the radar. His peak will be more than 10 years before he’s eligible to vote, so that will hurt his standing in people’s memory. His bWAR is 59.7 with better than 20 or that from defense. His primary comp is Jim Edmonds and IMO neither will sniff the Hall.
Agree, this guy is not a HOF player.
It’s true that the Hall voters don’t buy and care for things such as UZR, but Andruw’s reputation for being a good defensive outfielder doesn’t come from UZR or metrics. Any who has watched Andruw play thinks of him as a great defensive CFer, arguably the best. He’s a case were public perception and metrics seem to agree. Doesn’t matter if you judged him by your eyes or by looking at UZR, just about everyone thinks Andruw was one of the best defensive CFers. Even most Hall voters would agree with that.
While the Hall doesn’t seem to care much for defense or metrics like UZR, players who have the reputation of being all-time greats defensively, while being average or below average offensively, have gotten in. Andruw has that. That’s Andruw’s hope at getting in, and assuming that his sudden drop off and second half of his career doesn’t overshadow that, I’d imagine he has a fairly good chance at getting. The problem is that the second half of his career may very well overshadow his defensive prime.
Absolutely. His 10 Gold Gloves (overrated year-to-year or even over a handful of them to be sure) have only been bested by Mays and Clemente all time. That means a lot.
Well, bWAR and fWAR are on different scales, and 60 bWAR is HoF level. So you’re using evidence that doesn’t support your point.
Two things. #1. Bill Mazeroski got in on defense. Laughably. #2. Dale Murphy had his best season at age 31 (7.4 war), then he fell off the planet. It happens.
Jones is hardly the first player to have his stats drop off a cliff in his early 30’s. Anyone remember Dale Murphy? Checkout his career after 1987.
or Ernie Banks, or Robin Yount.
Also in his early 30’s Dale Murphy fell off a cliff / the planet / the entire universe, but REALLY high up there towards the top of it so it was quite a long fall indeed.
Andruw was snobbed for MVP in 2005 because his batting average was “only” 265
or thereabouts. Andruw led the Braves to the play-offs in a year when Chipper hardly played and there were times when at 27 he was the oldest player on the field, because that was the year that Braves brought up all those rookies. Pujols beat him out in the voting for MVP, where for the NL Andruw most definite was the best player to lead his team to the play-offs during those record years. Smolts and Maddux often said that they felt very comfortable on the mound knowing that Andruw was in centerfield. He played so shallow that a lot of bloopers never fell for hits, and even dove for sinking linedrives that other outfielders would let fall in for a hits.I don’t see that anymore. I didn’t see it before Andruw did it either.