Stats Geek: Iwamura isn't biggest loser
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Pirates second baseman Aki Iwamura.
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So where will Aki Iwamura rank in the pantheon of pitiful Pittsburgh Pirates pickups?
He is probably not the worst acquisition the Pirates have made in 17 years of losing, which is just one reason their streak is the longest in the history of pro sports.
This week, the Pirates benched the ailing Iwamura, 31. He entered the season a career .281 hitter but hasn't hit and has shown less mobility at second base than early contestants in "The Biggest Loser." Neil Walker, 24, a former catcher turned jack-of-all-gloves, has played only 21 minor league games at second, but Walker could hardly play the position any worse than Iwamura has this year.
Free-agent failure, alas, is nothing new to long-suffering Pirates fans. The indispensable baseball-reference.com allows quick assembly of an all-subpar Pirates team going back to 1993. Searching among those who had been to the plate at least 175 times in a season, eight suspects in the weaker-stick-than-Aki sweepstakes turned up.
The criteria was Adjusted On-Base Plus Slugging Percentage, which not only looks at how often a batter reached base and how many bases he tallied, but compares his luck to how the rest of the league did that year in the same ballparks. An average player has an OPS+ of 100. Iwamura ended play Sunday at 42.
In other words, his .172 batting average, .272 on-base average and .248 slugging average made Iwamura less than half as productive as an average hitter. But others have been comparable or worse since '93.
Let's start with the closet comparable batter, Randall Simon, who likewise turned in an OPS+ of 42 in 2004, his second tour with the organization.
General manager Dave Littlefield incredibly went back for more Simon after trading him to the Cubs in the fire sale of 2003. Littlefield signed the sausage-pounder for $800,000 rather than keep the gloriously productive beer-league slugger Matt Stairs or simply play the annually under-appreciated Craig Wilson. Simon batted .194/.264/.280 in 193 plate appearances and lost his job to Daryle Ward.
First Published June 4, 2010 12:00 am
