Jhonny gets dumped on—fat shortstop, no range, etc.—because of his demeanor. He’s laid back. No jumping around like Tom Veryzer. This is unfortunate because he really is a very good player. His postseason should have given him all sorts of credit. (He crushed a ball to center field at Fenway that would have been out of the park had he hit it anyplace other than deepest part of the park. I don’t recall the details of the situation, but I remember it as potentially game-changing had it gone out. Was it off Wakefield in game four? In which case it didn’t matter.)

Regarding his “putting it all together,” though, that doesn’t happen much to Cleveland players.

Hopefully he changes the pattern a little bit for 2008. In 2007, the rest of the months were:

June: .262 BA with .757 OPS
July: .275 BA with .767 OPS
August: .243 BA with .612 OPS
September: .262 BA with .789 OPS

I suppose it could be that those numbers consist of hot and cold streaks, but looking at the numbers – he definitely has his best month early on (May).

I love Jhonny and we really need his bat to be contributing as much as possible this year to make up for the incredible disappearing power hitters.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Jhonny Peralta is our Adam Dunn.

Have you ever talked to a Reds fan about Dunn? They hate him. Despite the fact that he routinely hits 40 homers and has carried a line of .248/.379/.527 over the past three years, all Reds fans can talk about are his strikeouts and his inability to hit in the clutch (which is, incidentally, the best criticism you can make of an otherwise awesome player, since the definition of clutch hitting is so arbitrary). Admittedly, the strikeouts are a problem, but Dunn’s strengths as a hitter (tons of power, tons of patience) far outweigh his drawbacks (that he’s not contact oriented), and objectively speaking, he’s been the most valuable player on that club, outside of maybe Harang, for the last five or six years.

Jhonny’s also been extremely valuable for the Tribe, but for different reasons. From 2005-2007, he’s put up a line of .342/.442/.784. Right now he’s second on the team and second among all AL shortstops in VORP with 8.5, and last year (at age 25) he was fifth on the team and sixth among AL shortstops with a VORP of 26.3. I think that people tend to forget how young Jhonny is since he’s seemingly been around forever; while he hasn’t been performing at the superstar level he reached in 2005, he has been league average or better for his position pretty much every year in his young career. That bodes very well for his future, especially given his extremely club-friendly contract.

I understand why people get frustrated with Jhonny-as you pointed out, he is very streaky (although, even during his ‘cold period’ this year, a .748 OPS is pretty damn decent for a SS) and his inability to make contact is frustrating. But he’s cheap, has patience and tons of power, and is young and improving-he’ll hit 30 HR this year and get that OBP up to .320 or so-all while playing a premium defensive position (if only adequately). Also, he was huge in the playoffs last year, and would have been a shoo-in for the ALCS MVP had we won. I think casual fans dislike him because they don’t really understand the more objective methods of assessing a player’s value that have cropped up in the last decade or so-they see a chubby SS with a low BA who isn’t Omar Vizquel and they get pissed off. Fortunately, I don’t think our front office feels the same way, and i’m expecting big things from Jhonny over the next three years or so.

deserves alot more credit than he gets. People have to realize that he’s above average offensively and little below average defensively … which makes for a pretty good shortstop.

here’s a little tidbit:

Jimmy Rollins: 99 career OPS+
Jhonny Peralta: 100 career OPS+

Tox, didn’t think you’d mind, I updated the article with the exact OPS as of the end of yesterday’s game.

i love: .748 OPS (buoyed by 6 HRs)

why didn’t you do that for all of them? 1.049 OPS (anchored by 10 strikeouts)

Just for fun — yeah, that weird — I thought I’d look up the BABIP for each period Tox isolated:

Apr 2 – Apr 14: .321 BA .948 OPS — .364
Apr 15 – May 14: .223 BA .748 OPS — .238
May 15 – May 29: .389 BA 1.049 OPS — .419

2008

Mar 31 – Apr 11: .324 BA .991 OPS — .321
Apr 12 – May 13: .149 BA .480 OPS — .169
May 14 – May 30: .308 BA 1.060 OPS — .314

What’s not surprising is that the BABIP is such a huge part of the overall fluctuation.

What is surprising is that Jhonny’s BABIP is so low for 2008 as a whole — .244, compared to his career number of .319. That suggests strongly that he’s hit into a bunch of bad luck.

That horrible 31 days in the middle there is showing horrifically bad luck. But the first two weeks and last two weeks, there’s no real indication of good luck, those BABIP numbers are normal for him. Outside of a bunch of bad bounces, he’s actually having a huge year.

His “predicted OPS” is 839, which is the 16th best in the AL. There 19 players in the AL whose OPS is 75 points lower than “predicted,” and the Indians have five of them — or looking at it another we only have seven “qualified” everyday hitters, and five of them have been hit for more than 75 points of bad luck.

so true.

the majority of tribe fans are still convinced that Barfield is an amazing defensive 2B. I probably would too, if it weren’t for the fact that baseball prospectus’ FRAA, THT’s RZR, and several other systems are all in agreement that he sucks. it blew my mind to see how vastly different my subjective impressions were to those objective ratings. . .

someone above brought up the fact that JP has a higher career OPS than 2007 NL MVP Jimmy Rollins. . .

so I got curious and wanted to compare Jhonny’s age 23-26 seasons with some other shortstops from around the league:

JP’s OPS+
2005 – 137
2006 – 83
2007 – 100
2008 – 104 (work in progress, obviously)

Jimmy Rollins (age 23-26): 85, 90, 102, 107

Miguel Tejada (age 23-26, and yes, I think these #’s are correctly matched, as it shows 2008 as his age 34 season): 51, 79, 95, 111

Michael Young (age 24-26): 80, 78, 97

Edgar Renteria (age 23-26): 84, 92, 77, 113

and just for the hell of it, Derek Jeter (age 23-26): 103, 127, 153, 128

now, I don’t want to draw too many conclusions from these numbers, because Peralta’s body type and playing style obviously differ from some of these players. However, in Jhonny’s young career, he’s already playing at a higher level than several All-Star caliber shortstops were at his age. As I said above, just being league average at age 23 or 24 is usually a harbinger of good things to come, and while we can see that Jhonny probably will never cross into the elite echelon with SS like Jeter and Hanley Ramirez, I think that this comparison really illustrates how much people underrate the guy—it’s certainly reasonable to expect him to post five or six seasons with an OPS+ of 120 or more as he hits his prime as a hitter, which would be wonderful.

HIRE PERALTA!!!

That’s about the only contribution I can make to this thread that hasn’t already been said.

Great work guys.

Is Jay letting people write in the subject line now?