April 26, 2005
The Beat Goes On
Redleg Nation interviews Cincinnati Post beat-writer and spring training blogger Marc Lancaster. I liked his take on Adam Dunn:
RN: What about Adam Dunn? He seems like the same type of regular guy.
ML: He is. In a different way, he is. He’s just a fun-loving guy who doesn’t – and I don’t want this to sound the wrong way, because I don’t think of it like this – he doesn’t take it too seriously. I mean, he works his butt off at what he does, but he’s never going to let it define him. And I think that’s a very healthy thing. You can really get caught up in stuff, as tense as the season is, and he has, I think, a really good attitude toward how to approach this game.
If you remember, in the past, when people were approaching that Major League strikeout record, they’d sit out the last six games of the season, or something. Jose Hernandez did it with Milwaukee a few years ago. And Adam was just like, “Whatever. Bring it on.”
And the truth is, there was a list of guys in baseball last year who would not have traded their entire set of numbers for Adam Dunn’s. A really short list. Pujols, Bonds, Rolen, maybe. Not a whole lot of guys who wouldn’t have taken exactly what Dunn had, strikeouts and all, considering all the other production he put up.
He’s an unbelievable talent, he really is.
Posted by David Pinto at
11:33 AM
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Perceptive comment on Dunn. We know that the incremental effect of a K relative to a non K out is only .01 runs--which means that it can effectively be ignored. By being willing to K, Dunn opens himself up to so many side benefits, such as more walks and more good pitches to hit. The bottom line is, you put it all together in an evaluation, giving the Ks the weight they merit, and by that standard Dunn is one of the better hitters in MLB. That doesn't mean that every batter should be unconcerned about his Ks. If you are a weak hitter with little power and few walks, you probably should focus on putting the ball in play, to take advantage of the substancial randomness of a ball in play.
