The 10 million dollar (broken) man

FILE/JIM DAVIS/GLOBE STAFF
Eric D. Schabell
Contributing Writer

Last night he went over 50 at-bats, half of the 100 at-bats considered valid to review a hitters performance.

Needing 100 at-bats for a valid sample size to evaluate statistically, it will be another 15 games or so before we can do final evaluations, yet it is interesting to trace the current results.

Time now to review our 10.1MM dollar acquisition Stephen Drew, brought in to shore up the left side of the infield at shortstop and put a productive bat into the lineup.

Leading into last night against the Yankees, he was 6-49 with a .122 AVG and had committed one error in the 14 games he started this season.

Drew was red hot (for his level of hitting this year) last night where he went 1-3 with a double. That brings the grand total of extra base hits to two, and the grand total of hits over 53 at-bats this season to seven.

His upward trending batting average is now a whopping .134.

That is $142,857.14 per hit so far.

After the game Drew commented, "I've had good at-bats. I'm not going to pressure myself. I've just got to get myself going. I had no Spring Training. And when you're hitting balls at people, there's nothing you can do about it. I've had some bad at-bats as well. I take that into consideration. You learn from it and adjust and go from there."

To be fair we should project this out to 100 at-bats and then correlate the results, so taking his 48 at-bats left we will apply best case, average case, and worst case scenarios.

  • Best case:
    • gets red hot and hits .350 over next 48 at-bats
      • gives him 16 more hits and a .230 AVG
  • Average case:
    • hits .200 over next at-bats
      • gives him 9 more hits and a .160 AVG
  • Worst case:
    • hits .120 over next at-bats (roughly what he is doing now)
      • gives him 5 more hits and a .120 AVG
It would be fun to speculate on these three paths for the rest of the remaining +70 games the Red Sox will play, but hitters go through ups and downs. If everything goes along with Drew's career average of .264 then he should pull it up to around .200 AVG by year end.

The question is, who needs a .200 AVG shortstop that costs you $10.1MM dollars?

Xander Bogaerts was slashing .296/.389/.427 up to the point that he was moved to 3B. He hit .162 (12 of 74) in his first 19 games at third base with a .213 on-base percentage and six RBIs.

Brock Holt was slashing .305/.352/.427 shoring up the left infield corner until bumped elsewhere.

Both were playing their 'natural' positions and it all has crumbled from there since. Red Sox third basemen and shortstops were hitting .258 before Drew was added to the roster.

They have hit .199 since.

Again the question, who needs a $10MM dollar (broken) man?

Post a comment or via twitter @ericschabell with your thoughts.

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