Kicking Hope In The Groin

by
April 6, 2009

It’s Opening Day – meaningful MLB games return to the daily schedule, and for the next six months, we can settle in and enjoy what should be a fun season. Everyone starts out at 0-0, and while not every team has the same amount of hope, everyone has some “what if” scenario where things could break their way and they could be playing in October. It’s a day full of optimism for everyone – the teams who were bad last year offering up reasons why this year will be different.

Except in Washington, where it’s apparently more of the same. Even with the GM having resigned in disgrace and promises of a new organization going forward, the Nationals have managed to screw it up. Elijah Dukes, the best player on the team, is not in the line-up today. He’s not injured. He’s not being punished for an off the field transgression. He just had a bad spring, and Austin Kearns had a good spring, and that was enough for Manny Acta to decide that Kearns should get the first chunk of the playing time pie that will be split up amongst the crowd of outfielders the Nationals have.

Dukes had a .382 wOBA last year to go along with a UZR/150 of +13.7. In about 60% of a season’s worth of playing time, he was worth 2.9 wins to the Nationals, which put him on a +5 win pace over a full season. Five win players go to the all-star game, sign really big contracts, and become heroes to their fans.

Dukes will spend Opening Day on the bench.

I like Kearns as much as (probably more, actually) the next guy, but he’s not Elijah Dukes. He’s got some rebound potential and could be a nice role player on a team that needs a good defensive OF who can hit a bit, but he’s an expiring contract with no real future in Washington. He’s not a franchise cornerstone. He’s not even someone who will be with the organization next year.

Seriously, Washington, you have a 24-year-old coming off a .382 wOBA and a +13.7 UZR/150. I don’t care if he went 0 for 60 in spring training – you should play him whenever he’s healthy. This isn’t the kind of talent that you ask to share playing time, especially not with the likes of Kearns or Josh Willingham.

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.

Happy Opening Day, Nationals fans. Hope you weren’t planning on seeing the team’s best player.





 

Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.

45 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
vivaelpujols
16 years ago

I think that you have to look at the entire picture. I presume that they are trying to build up trade value for Austin Kearns. It isn’t the the Nationals are going to come within 20 games of the playoffs this year, so they might as well try to get some young talent at the expense of a couple of wins.

Also, Manny Acta is probably the best manager in baseball. I am sure that he realizes that ST stats aren’t that important, and Dukes is a really good player.

-1
Dave CameronMember since 2018
16 years ago
Reply to  vivaelpujols

When your bigger picture includes benching your best player, you need to hire a better artist.

And Manny Acta as the best manager in baseball? Reading The Book does not make him the best at his profession.

2
Chris
16 years ago
Reply to  Dave Cameron

Agreed that it’s a stupid decision, but…

I’m not 100% convinced that this is a situation where Kearns is going to get 90% of the ABs. Likely, Dukes is going to get his 400+ ABs filling in there, at CF, especially as injuries crop up.

Reading between the lines, there’s probably a bit of a message being sent to Dukes. With Bowden the enabler gone, this could be Acta’s way of asserting a bit of authority.

-1
vivaelpujols
16 years ago
Reply to  Dave Cameron

But it does make him aware of things like hot streaks, OPB and defense. That leads me to think he knows that there is no way that Kearns is better than Dukes. So I think that this move is either only temporary for opening day, or it is a strategy to bump up Kearns trade value.

-1
Will
16 years ago
Reply to  Dave Cameron

Vivaelpujols, I’m seriously in doubt of Acta’s skill. If he were aware of some of the more sabremetrically inclined stats, he doesn’t show it. Just look at his lineup construction:
1. Milledge
2. Guzman
3. Zimmerman
4. Dunn
5. Johnson
Even putting Milledge and Guzman’s OBP deficiencies aside (particularly Guz’s career .307! OBP), the fact that he’s putting Zimmerman ahead of Dunn and Johnson (OBP machines) doesn’t seem very smart.

0
vivaelpujols
16 years ago
Reply to  Dave Cameron

I’m not saying he’s a great manager (that was a stupid thing for me to say). I was saying that because he read The Book and seems to be somewhat sabermetrically inclined, that he might understand that hot streaks have no predictive value and the importance of OPB and defense, two things that Dukes does very well.

0