{"id":1468,"date":"2011-05-21T10:59:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T14:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2017-01-19T08:34:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-19T13:34:52","slug":"is-the-matt-stairs-experiment-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=1468","title":{"rendered":"Is the Matt Stairs experiment over?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Matt Stairs swings and misses at another fastball. Photo: Getty Images via zimbio.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Lost in the shuffle of Friday’s offensive explosion<\/a> in Baltimore was this line: Matt Stairs<\/strong>: 0-4, 2 strikeouts and 5 runners left on base hitting in the #5 hole.\u00a0 The coup-de-grace for me was the inexplicable bases-loaded strikeout he had in the 4th, letting a perfect down-the-middle fastball pass right by him to end the inning.<\/p>\n

That at-bat disgusted me.\u00a0 It isn’t the first time we’ve seen Stairs let a pitch go by that he clearly was guessing otherwise on, and in the end of course the at bat didn’t matter, but its indicative of where he is now as a hitter.\u00a0 On fastball counts, he’s guessing otherwise and letting pitches go by without even an offering in high-leverage situations.\u00a0 But for me, if you have 2 strikes you’re not trying to hit home runs; you’re trying to put the ball in play.\u00a0 It seems to me that his skills as a hitter have declined to the point where he’s depending more on guess work than his former hitting prowness to succeed at the plate.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, every other player in the lineup was mashing Baltimore pitching last night (well, except for Adam LaRoche<\/strong>, but that’s a different contract, a different defensive player, and a different story).\u00a0 Our 7-8-9 hitters were 8-13 (eight hits out of the bottom three!).<\/p>\n

I think its time to end the experiment.\u00a0 For the season (as of 5\/20) Stairs is 2 for 26<\/a> with no extra base hits.\u00a0 He has a NEGATIVE OPS+, meaning that he’s hitting roughly 100% worse than an average major league player.\u00a0 He has no defensive value and can’t pinch run when needed.\u00a0 I think we need to bring up someone else from AAA.<\/p>\n

Michael Aubrey<\/strong> didn’t have the worst numbers<\/a> the last time he played in the majors (Baltimore in 2009), is also a lefty, can play first base if needed and (if you believe his profile’d height\/weight of 6’0″ 190lbs) should be able to run the bases if needed.\u00a0 We have a 40-man spot open with the DFA of Broderick and we could make this move immediately as a like-for-like replacement for Stairs.\u00a0 If you didn’t want to add a guy to the roster, you could also just call up Chris Marrero<\/strong>, who doesn’t quite have Aubrey’s power but is hitting consistently in AAA<\/a> and had 18 homers in AA last year.\u00a0 Marrero could be a righty bat off the bench coupled with Ankiel’s lefty bat as a 4th outfielder\/bat off the bench as well.<\/p>\n

Either way, I think its time to make a change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lost in the shuffle of Friday’s offensive explosion in Baltimore was this line: Matt Stairs: 0-4, 2 strikeouts and 5 runners left on base hitting in the #5 hole.\u00a0 The coup-de-grace for me was the inexplicable bases-loaded strikeout he had in the 4th, letting a perfect down-the-middle fastball pass right by him to end the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[184,124,337,3397],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral","tag-adam-laroche","tag-chris-marrero","tag-matt-stairs","tag-michael-aubrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13323,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions\/13323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}