O’ Furcal, Where Art Thou?

When the Dodgers hired Joe Torre this offseason they envisioned a manager whose calm demeanor could offer stability to a rumored dissentious clubhouse. Regardless of whether or not this worked, the team was 14-13 through the first month and sat five games over .500 at 19-14 on May 6th. Unfortunately, that May 6th victory came without shortstop Rafael Furcal who had been, by all accounts, their best player to date. I discussed Furcal’s numbers both here and at Baseball Prospectus as he got off to an absolutely scorching start.

When he went down with injury, here is what the Dodgers lost:

154 PA, 49-134, 12 2B, 2 3B, 5 HR, 11.2 K%, .366/.448/.597, 1.045 OPS

The injury quickly worsened and, following a few more setbacks, it appears that Furcal will miss the rest of the season. Now, losing a player to injury is generally only as bad as the performance level(s) of those replacing him; think Lou Gehrig for Wally Pipp, or, in football, Brady for Bledsoe. Unfortunately for Dodgers fans the inverse has happened with Furcal.

Since he went down the others occupying his position have produced the following:

218 PA, 33-199, 6 2B, 2 3B, 1 HR, 19.1 K%, .166/.317/.231, .548 OPS

Looking at most of these numbers it seems that his replacements have combined to produce at around half his level. Filling in the majority of the time has been the triumvirate of Chin-Lung Hu, Luis Maza, and Angel Berroa. More recently it has been Nomar Garciaparra, a former all-star shortstop, though the jury is still out on whether he can come anywhere near Furcal’s early season production. Granted, Furcal wasn’t very likely to sustain those numbers all season—a .386 BABIP compared to his career rate a bit over .300 entering this year—but that isn’t to say his performance would regress to the poor numbers above.

With the trade deadline fast approaching it might be wise for the Colletti gang to look into a serious upgrade at shortstop—barring an offensive surge from Nomar—considering they are currently only one game behind the first place Diamondbacks despite a record two games under .500.