Patterson and Sosa Follow Divergent Paths Into Obscurity
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Three years ago, the Chicago Cubs made a surprising run to the playoffs on the strength of their starting rotation and an outfield of Sammy Sosa, Moises Alou, and Corey Patterson, who was injured in the summer while in the midst of a breakout season. Hitting .298 BA/. 329 OBA/.511 SLG with great baserunning and superb center field defense at 23, Patterson looked like a huge star in the making.
This week, following a season in which he hit .215 with no power and ended up spending several weeks in Triple-A, the Cubs traded Patterson to the Baltimore Orioles for, essentially, nothing – which is what they got when they traded Sosa to the Orioles last year at around the same time. Sosa, for his part, hit .221 with no power this year. The Washington Nationals are the only team even rumored to be interested in him, which is quite a fall for a man who’s hit 588 home runs and only two years ago hit 35 home runs in 126 at-bats.
The intersecting career paths of the two outfielders show something about the Cubs, who are chronically unable to move a player a year too early rather than a year too late, and also have a frustrating inability to get the best out of young players. They show more about how teams value players, and the mistakes teams make in trying to contend.
Two of the errors general managers most commonly make are overvaluing a player’s most recent season and overvaluing his career while ignoring recent seasons. This seems like a paradox, but isn’t; both point to the fact that executives are looking for patterns where there aren’t necessarily any to be found.
In the case of a player like Patterson, the first tendency is shown. He will be 26 this season, and in two of the last three seasons he’s hit reasonably well for a center fielder. He’s also an excellent defender. His main weakness is a poor batting eye, which leads to batting average-suppressing strikeouts and low walk totals. Still, he still has significant potential and in any case, despite his abominable 2005,he’s likely to hit more or less as he did in 2004: 266/.320/.452 with speed.
That’s not great, but it’s not bad for the position, and given his defense, it’s pretty valuable. On a team like the Red Sox, which can afford to carry a poor hitter for his defense and which would have put little pressure on Patterson, he would have been quite valuable. Uncharacteristically, the Orioles made a low-risk gamble with tremendous upside. It’s a good deal for them, and a missed opportunity for any number of other teams.
Sosa, obviously, shows the inverse tendency. From 1998 through 2004, he averaged 46 home runs a year, and he’ll be 37 this year – not young in baseball years, but not so old it’s inconceivable he has something left. Unfortunately, he doesn’t. Whether because of age, because he stopped corking his bat (or his muscles), or whatever else, Sosa is done as a ballplayer. He has no defensive value, can’t hit for average, and doesn’t hit for enough power or draw enough walks to compensate.
A player without his credentials – who hit .221/.295/.376 at age 36 while battling injuries last year – would be scraping for a minor-league deal with an invitation to spring training; any team considering signing Sosa to an actual deal with a guaranteed job is being blinded by gaudy stats from years ago.
How to avoid both of these traps, being fooled neither by a player’s most recent season nor by his track record? It’s more or less a matter of common sense. You can project what most players will do in most seasons by averaging what they’ve done over the last three seasons, weighing their most recent season most heavily, and adjusting for the fact that older players are more likely to decline while younger ones are more likely to improve.
Doing so points up Patterson as a player likely to hit below the league average, but not so far he can’t make up for it with his glove, and with a decent chance to recover his 2003 form in the right situation. It also points to Sosa as a player with little chance of hitting even at the league average for his position.
This isn’t brain science, but every GM has his weakness. Cubs GM Jim Hendry gives up on young players who aren’t big stars, while Nationals GM Jim Bowden (like both New York GMs) lusts after players with a chance to recover their former stardom. If you want to know which teams are going to surprise this season, look for those teams whose executives do neither.
