So Bad We Don’t Qualify
The Astros released Bill Hall last week to make room for the returning Jason Bourgeois. The 31-year-old Hall had been awful this season for the Astros, producing 0.9 wins below replacement. His fielding has eroded in recent years, and his offense, aside for what appears to be a fluky uptick last season, has left much to be desired for almost five seasons. His wOBAs since 2006? Try .317, .297, .261, .342, .269.
Sure, there was some reason to think that the .342 might be more indicative of his offensive proclivities, but the signing was odd for a team like the Astros. To guarantee $3 million at the major league level and include an option for next season suggests that the team believed Hall had some upside. They still have Jeff Keppinger under control, but his injury opened up a spot. Since Hall isn’t a puts-butts-in-seats kind of guy, it probably would have made more sense to use some farmhand in the spot until Keppinger returned.
Where did his -0.9 WAR rank, you ask? Good question, I say, as the original theme of this post changed from why signing Hall made little sense for the Astros when a realization was made scanning the leaderboards. The default setting on our leaderboards filters only for batters that qualify for a batting title. Sorting the players by WAR from the bottom up, I expected to see Hall’s name toward the top of the list. It wasn’t there. The list went:
– Chone Figgins (-1.2)
– Aubrey Huff (-0.9)
– Miguel Tejada (-0.9)
– Dan Uggla (-0.8)
– Orlando Cabrera (-0.8)
– Hideki Matsui (-0.8)
Hall was nowhere to be found, even though his -0.9 was the same as Huff’s and Tejada’s mark. Hall has been so bad this season that he doesn’t even qualify for most leaderboards.
