Baseball America - Mets Top Ten Prospects - 1999

[Benjamin Grimm]

I remember hearing, perhaps on WFAN, that "the Mets don't need A-Rod because they have Rey Ordonez."

[Frayed Knot]

DEFENSE!!!!

[batmagadanleadoff]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I remember hearing, perhaps on WFAN, that "the Mets don't need A-Rod because they have Rey Ordonez."

WFAN? You probably heard that everywhere. Everybody lost their minds over Rey Fraudonez. The guy couldn't hit the ball past the pitcher's mound if you spotted him four bounces. His fans are probably the same knuckleheads who think that Gary Carter's number should be retired. They traded a future all-star, Melvin Mora, who could hit more HRs in a month than Fraudonez could hit in his entire career, all because of their ridiculous fascination with the piece of crap player. And he was a bad guy, too. A prima Donna. A diva who threw tantrums and made scandals whenever it was decided that he needed a day off. You woulda thought he was Lou Fucking Gehrig the way he carried on whenever he was rested with the manufactured outrage. It got so bad that Bobby V had to rest the brat like on the same day that somebody good, like John Olerud, would get a day off. "See? I'm resting Oly, too! He also needs a rest. It's not just you, Rey."

[Edgy MD]

Not to defend the deployment of Ordóñez, but let us not believe that WAR has defense figured out yet. Some versions of WAR likely have it better than others, but since their formulae are proprietary to the agencies, it is hard to say which. And many defensive metrics that had once been at the forefront or mainstream of measuring defensive contributions have since been scrap-heaped as less than useless.



I do believe that StatCast and other motion-capture data have brought us very far in the last few years in measuring the impact of defensive performances, but until somebody cares to find a way to transfer older game footage into three-dimensional models to apply that technology to older performances, we will struggle to compare historical performances to contemporary ones.



Again, that isn't to endorse or dispute any conclusion about the deployment of Ordóñez or any other defense-first player, but I think the question is still open.

[batmagadanleadoff]

You can't be as horseshit of a hitter as Fraudonez was and claim to be an asset. Do you know how good of a fielder he'd have to have been to overcome his sad, pathetic ineptitude with the bat -- to justify the absurd and unjustified vomit-inducing accolades smart Mets fans have had to endure during Fraudonez's Mets tenure? So good that no stat, no statistician could possibly overlook the value of his defensive prowess. It'd be like not seeing the tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur living in your backyard.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The thing with Ordonez was he confounded people for not improving. He had all the hand-eye coordination in the world, it's not hard to imagine he could have gotten more from his abilities as a hitter. I think that's what the Mets were hopeful of, and fans too. He just turned out to be a hardheaded asshole who didn't take to coaching and thought he was a good hitter. And then his fielding went to shit.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: He had all the hand-eye coordination in the world.

So did Wayne Gretzky and Muhammad Ali. Jimi Hendrix, too. But I wouldn't want them taking any at-bats for the Mets. Fraudonez was an awful baseball player who had the capacity to make highlight reel worthy plays. And personally, having been a full season ticket holder for his entire Mets stint and having seen more of his games than I can remember up close, I would swear that he was a fucking fraud, who purposely timed some of his defensive stops to turn what should have been an easy routine defensive play into something that ESPN would replay later that evening.

[Centerfield]

Point taken about WAR being imperfect. But it's not like Ordonez numbers are close to being good, where a tweak in the formula may lead to a different perception. Rey's numbers are categorically awful. And unless you throw out WAR as too flawed to even consider, it's a damning assessment. He had a negative WAR or a WAR under 1 in all but one year as a Met.



Andrelton Simmons is considered a glove first SS. His WAR numbers put Ordonez to shame.



As for his offense, it's not just that he put up terrible numbers. It's that he had the misfortune of almost always being healthy so he would take up 500 ABs of terrible numbers. I really think if we had OPS as a stat back then, not only would he have not gotten that contract, he would have been the late inning sub he deserved to be.

[Edgy MD]

Oh, we definitely had it. Like Doug Flynn before him, Rey's consistently low averages somewhat masked the reality that average wasn't really his problem. Rob Neyer among others wrote at length about how much just a few more walks and/or doubles would do for his stock. But he wasn't just a .245 hitter, but a .245 hitter whose game was about 80% singles.

[Centerfield]

True. Let me rephrase. If OPS had been as common and as widely understood as it is now, there would have been no debate.



Imagine if the Mets gave a multi year deal to a player with a sub .600 OPS. There would have been rioting.



As for “fraud”. I don't know if I'd go as far as calling Ordonez a fraud, but certainly his WAR numbers suggest his defense wasn't as valuable as advertised. Take a look at Seattle era Vizquel numbers. They're far better than Rey. Maybe it's that Omar had better range and Rey just looked cooler and more acrobatic.

[batmagadanleadoff]

He couldn't hit. He was a sad, incompetent and overmatched hitter. On hitting alone, he shouldn't have even been allowed to wear a major league uniform, let alone to play in a major league game. On hitting alone, he wasn't even good enough to play in AAA ball.



And as if that alone wasn't bad enough, he was hyped up, every single fucking day, as if he were the Babe Ruth of shortstops. Howie Rose blubbering nonsense about how he probably saved the Mets a run a day. My God! Do you have any fucking idea what it is for a team to allow 162 less runs than in the previous season? And then to attribute that all to one fucking player? Just one player? And not even a starting pitcher.

[Bob Alpacadaca]

[media=youtube]Q-mOARcFwb8?feature=shared[/media]



Couldn't hit a lick, but I sure did enjoy watching him field! Three Gold Gloves. Finished fifth in ROY voting in an admittedly weak year. I'd forgotten that he spent time in Tampa Bay and with the Cubs.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I can't believe we're arguing about Ordonez almost 30 years later.



Those plays in that video- not really embellished

[The Hot Corner]

Rey was a very good defensive shortstop. However, I always that he often made routine plays look harder than they were and made difficult chances look extraordinary. He definitely had flair. Unfortunately, his offense was so anemic that there is no way his defense could ever have made up for it.

[The Hot Corner]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: I can't believe we're arguing about Ordonez almost 30 years later.

Well, we have to have something to argue about.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I remember during those years, when the upcoming inning would have the Mets 7-8-9 hitters due up, with Ordonez the 8 guy, thinking it was just about certain to be a dead inning. Not a good thing for a contending club.



I see he hit .245 as a Met, which is higher than I would have guessed. But with a .290 OBP and .304 slugging.



I decided to compare him with Bud Harrelson: .234/.324/.287. Those are pretty awful too, but it was a different era, when fewer shortstops were expected to hit. By the time of Ordonez, there was A-Rod and Nomar and Ripken and Larkin and Vizquel and that guy in the Bronx. And we had Rey Ordonez.

[Gwreck]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: . I decided to compare him with Bud Harrelson: .234/.324/.287. Those are pretty awful too, but it was a different era, when fewer shortstops were expected to hit.

With the known disclaimer that WAR is far from perfect in measuring defense, Harrelson had a pretty decent run from 1969 to 1974, averaging over 2.4 WAR for that 6-season span. Ordonez…does not even come close.

[Centerfield]

Harrelson was the better player. Looking at his OPS+, Harrelson was 75 as a Met. Ordonez was 58.



And the WAR numbers are not close. In 13 seasons Buddy had a WAR of 18.6 (avg. 1.43/season). Ordonez had a 0.9 WAR in 7 seasons (avg. 0.12/season). Basically, Rey Ordonez was a replacement player who got starter playing time and starter money.



The problem with the bottom of that Mets lineup is #8 is where you would bat your backup catcher, your emergency callup, a fill-in guy. On the Mets, that scrub batted 7th. So you get 7. Scrub, 8. Ordonez, 9. Pitcher. Just awful.

[Frayed Knot]

The biggest difference with Harrelson is that he took walks. That 100 point difference between his career BA & OBA is well above ML norms in his or in any other era.

Just for some perspective, Keith the Met didn't walk that often (90) and even Olerud wasn't much ahead of him (110).

Now part of that can be traced to batting 8th and being pitched around in front of the pitcher but those conditions still existed in Rey's time too and his 45 pt BA/OBA gap (65-70 is the typical ML avg) means that he was making outs at a much greater rate than Buddy even if the BA & SLG numbers were similar.

That's the biggest factor in the OPS and WAR difference.

[Edgy MD]

Harrelson also ran the bases well.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

bunted well too, where Ordonez clearly preferred popping out to shallow left to bunting