J.D. Drew again

I love that Theo Epstein gets it...

“Based on his skill set, he’s always going to have underwhelming RBI totals,’’ Epstein said last September in an interview on 98.5 The Sports Hub. “When you’re putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn’t matter. When you have a player that takes a ton of walks, who doesn’t put the ball in play at an above-average rate and is a certain type of hitter, he’s not going to drive in a lot of runs.

“If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs. And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player, and that’s not make outs.’’

Posnanski on Epstein on Drew

Probably the best baseball writer working right now, Joe Posnanski, talks about J.D. Drew, Theo Epstein and the Red Sox, with this quote from Theo about Drew:

And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that's NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn't make outs. He's always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he's a really good base runner. So when he doesn't make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs -- and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It's outstanding.

You guys can talk about RBIs if you want, I just ... we ignore them in the front office ... and I think we've built some pretty good offensive clubs. If you want to talk about RBIs at all, talk about it as a percentage of opportunity, but it's just simply not a way or something we use to evaluate offensive players.

Everyone who has read me on baseball for any length of time knows that this is exactly how I feel about it. It's very comforting to have a front-office that "gets it" the way this front office does.

J.D. Drew - overpaid, yes. Disaster? Well...

J.D. Drew has been a disappointment for Boston this year. There has been some pretty severe vitriol aimed at him by the fan base, though some people are noticing that he's been a little better the past couple of weeks.

Well, it's been more than the past couple of weeks.

April-July:	.248/.354/.375/.729
Since August 1st:	.303/.401/.483/.884

For at least the last two months, he's been an asset. Whether he's adjusted, or whether the health concerns for his infant son have lessened the personal stress, whatever the cause, he's been, if less than they wanted, still a good and valuable player.