Today I'm thrilled to announce the latest addition to the SweetSpot Network: Ghostrunner on First, covering the Toronto Blue Jays and masterminded by the wonderfully named Drew Fairservice.
Today, Drew looks at Adam Lind's awful 2010 numbers and finds ... well, maybe they weren't quite as awful as they look:
I'm going a long way to say Adam Lind had two crappy months and isn't nearly as awful as he showed in 2010. Lind experienced some criminally bad luck in June both by average on balls in play and home run per fly ball.
As I stated earlier, "future Adam Lind" is a lot more likely to put up strong (but not spectacular) numbers in the .850 OPS/.360 wOBA neighbourhood. The .390 wOBA we saw a year ago is what the kids call "a career year." It happens.
--snip--
Lind's team-friendly, option-heavy deal provides the front office enough rope to bide their time and fairly assess if Lind is the right fit for the Jays and the eventual playoff push. If a cheaper or better option presents itself, so be it. Players with Lind's type of pop don't fall out of trees, but they're hardly endangered species either.
Well, Lind's contract isn't that team-friendly; they're committed to paying him nearly $20 million, regardless. And Lind is 27, so it's not like he figures to get a lot better. It does seem likely that 2009 was his career year, and it does seem unlikely that he'll again rank as the game's top DH.
But, yes: He was up in 2009, down in 2010, and he's likely to settle somewhere in the middle in the coming seasons. And at $5 million per season for the next three seasons, somewhere in the middle is perfectly fine as long as he's not blocking a younger, better hitter.