NL East Preview, Part 2

In part one I took a look at the infields of our talented division, and decided that we're in relatively good shape. With today's review of the outfields, I think it's time to face the music. (According to Peter Gammons' far superior NL East breakdown, our team song is "The High Cost of Low Living". Oh, Peter.) And now it's out with the infielders, and in with the -- oh, hell, here they are.

Left Field

     1) ATL: Larry Wayne Jones
     2) NYM: Cornelius Cliff Floyd
     3) PHI: Pat Burrell
     4) MON: Brad Wilkerson
     5) FLA: Jose Miguel Torres Cabrera


If I had a time machine, I would travel back to the start of the 2003 season and find Pete Rose. "Pete," I would say, "What do you think of Pat Burrell?" Then I would take my winnings back with me and comfortably retire to a life of blogging. I would pay a man to train a chimpanzee to type my HTML. I would feed the chimp bananas and occasionally let it secretly take Kyle's place in the post-writing rotation. ("OOH OOH AH AH DAMON," he would write. "His finest work!" you would exclaim.)

I'll do you a favor and save the rest of my adventures with Mr. Giggles for another day, perhaps when the Mets lose their ninetieth game. Suffice it to say that there's no PECOTA on god's green earth that could've predicted Burrell would crack like the Liberty Bell last year. It's inexplicable to me and was frustrating to witness. I'm usually a fan of divisional rivals mailing it in, but his struggles (like Burnitz') passed the point where it was funny to laugh at them. I'm rooting for him to rebound this year, despite his perennial success against the Mets, in the same way that I want Burnitz to club four hundred homers at Coors or some similar absurdity so ludicrous they don't bother testing him for steroids. That said, I can't place the shaky Pat above a healthy Floyd; I'd love to see what Legion Commander Cornelius could do with 150 games. When I say that Chipper is the "class" of this group, you know that I'm referring solely to his hitting ability, which is bound to decline markedly one of these years. It just has to. Wilkerson and Cabrera both have a good bit of power, and Brad gets on base a ton. I'm not saying they're terrible players, I just don't expect them to be as good as the rest.

Center Field

     1) ATL: Andruw Rudolf Jones
     2) MON: Carl Edward Everett
     3) NYM: Mike Terrance Cameron
     4) FLA: Juan Pierre
     5) PHI: Marlon Jerrard Byrd

If you take a look at Andruw's numbers the past couple of years, you'll see why I think he's the best:

2003 .277/.338/.513
2002 .264/.366/.512

Let's throw in his MFER (Moral Factor Equivalency Rating) and have a gander at his adjusted stats:

2003 .000/.000/.000
2002 .000/.000/.000

It becomes easy to see why I hate him. (If that was a difficult calculation to follow, you haven't been reading this blog for very long. Take heart! There's still time to hit that back button. Otherwise, see here.) Carl Everett, cancerous lesion or not, can still hit the ball pretty damn well. I think he'll continue his rejuvenation, with an assist from a one Hiram Bithorn. Cameron's really not that bad, once you get past his abysmal average. He won't be much fun to watch at the plate, I'm afraid, as he whiffs a lot, which is frustrating, and walks a lot, which is boring. Still, he hits a decent number of longballs and gets on base at a mighty clip, so I think it's safe to say he brings more to the club than his glove. Pierre is likable and very fun to watch (I'm partial to the drama of the stolen base) but overrated. Byrd is supposed to improve with age. I wish him the best of luck.

Right Field

     1) PHI: Bobby Kelly Abreu
     2) ATL: David Jonathan Drew
     3) FLA: Jeff Guy Conine
     4) NYM: Gustavo Karim Garcia/Michael Shane Spencer
     5) MON: Juan Rivera

Abreu is both immensely talented and underrated. Except people have been talking about how underrated he is for a while now, so I'm going to chalk him up on the board with Garret Anderson in the category of "Players We Have Failed to Appreciate to the Point of Appreciating Them". JD Drew highlights this group's uncanny knack for being dissatisfied with the names printed on their birth certificates. The rules of this preview compel me to neglect his durability issues, but I think it's safe to say we all know he's going to crush several vertebrae helping Chipper hide evidence of his latest affairs, or blow out his elbow throwing rocks at churchgoers with Andruw. Conine's a pretty solid guy whose career I haven't really followed and so can't crack wise about. Just watching his flair for the dramatic in Florida last year gives me a sinking feeling that he'll be providing me with more tears than laughter.

Speaking of crying and laughing, General Gustavo and Platoon Leader Michael will be provoking one or the other this season and I'll be damned if I can figure out which. The question here is how they'll be used, and Cedeno's presence on our roster makes me think the answer is "improperly". And I can see ditching Gustavo for Karim, that makes sense, but what's so bad about Michael that made Shane seem so much more appealing? I'm sure there are logical explanations for these things, but you'll be hard pressed to offer one that justifies giving Juan Rivera an everyday job in the majors. I like him, but I don't think he's got the talent. Hopefully he'll prove me wrong.

Tallying up the points, with low meaning good and high meaning bad (but not the kind of bad which also means good, for the out of touch high school guidance counselors among our readers), you get these numbers for the outfield:

Braves: 4
Mets: 9
Phillies: 9
Expos: 11
Marlins: 13

And combining that with my infield rankings yields the impossible:

Mets: 12 + 9 = 21
Expos: 11 + 11 = 22
Braves: 18 + 4 = 22
Phillies: 16 + 9 = 25
Marlins: 18 +12 = 30

Obviously this has no significance whatsoever, as having the worst left fielder shouldn't count the same as having the worst second baseman, yet it pleases me to say that the Mets have neither.

I said I would include pitching with my take on the outfields, but this post has run long and anyway I'd rather bask in the merry glow of my ridiculousness and leave you for today with the only preseason ranking that has the Mets anywhere near the top. Enjoy the respite, as I'll be forced to string together words alongside phonetically transcribed howls of rage when I write about Glavine and Co. in the concluding part three later this week.