Jared From Bridgewater

I was on Dale and Holley today at about 1:45 today talking about Michael Young, anyone catch it?

I was looking at Michael Youngs stats last night to prepare for a blog post so the numbers and info were fresh on my mind.

What I found was Young has declined a ton from his peak in 2005. He had a great run for a few years in his late 20's but since then his SLG% (power) has dropped 70, 40, and 20 points to the point where he was literally a league average hitter last season.

Young's OPS (on base + slg) was the same as Lowrie's. And his line of 285avg, 402slg, and 12hr was pretty much the same as Ellsburys line but with 3 more HR and 35 less steals.

So everyone that called Dale and Holley today was saying we should upgrade our power and defense by getting Young. Noone was really against it. So I decided to call in and give my take.

My point as a caller was that people haven't payed attention to Youngs decline. They are still thinking of him as the guy who in 2005 had a 900 OPS, 24 HR, and a line that looked like Nomar's from 2002. And the current Young is not even worth the 5 yrs at 80mill he is going to be paid. Nevermind Boston having to trade Buchholz in order to have the opportunity to overpay for him. Holley agreed with me and we both thought the difference between Lowrie and Young in the field wasn't that significant but Dale had an issue with it.

Last night I found that Young does very bad on most defensive metrics because of bad range to his right. He does have soft hands though and a good arm that helped him win the gold glove. So his defense is overrated to me but I said to Dale that regardless if he is great in the field, it doesn't make up for paying an avg hitter 16mill and giving up Buchholz.

Oh yea, at one point I said that people have a hard time believing that Ellsbury and Young had a similar line last season. Dale goes OK I've seen the numbers but I think last year was more of an abberation. And I said well his slugging went from 528 to 460 to 420 to 402 last season since 2005 so that sounds like a trend to me. Holley was like Man I'm enjoying this keep preaching, haha.

Calling in was kinda sick, never done it before. Might start trying to call Dale and Holley once a week or something. Wow imagine the hits we would get if I could plug the blog? Actually if any of you can get on the air and say the name of the site before they cut you off I'll give you some dough. 888-525-0850

-Wolfie on the blackberry