2006 in Review- Chris Duffy

Now that 2006 is over, I'll be looking at one or two Pirates and their 2006 season each day. I'll look at what we expected, what we got, and what that might mean for the future. I may or may not assign a meaningless grade to their performance. Today: Chris Duffy.

2005 key stats: .308/.358/.464 in 338 PAs at AAA Indy and .341/.385/.429 in 135 PAs at Pittsburgh with 4 doubles, 1 3B, 1 HR, and 2 steals in 2 attempts.
2006 PECOTA: .287/.340/.405 with 21 2B, 4 3B, 6 HR, and 16 steals in 21 attempts in 444 PAs
2006 key stats: .255/.317/.338 with 1 HR, 14 2B, 3 3B, and 26 steals in 27 attempts in 333 PAs

Duffy is another tough one to figure out. He was hitting .194/.255/.276 when he was sent down to the minors in mid-May. Tracy and company had every reason to be upset with him at that point, they rightly wanted to turn him into a Freddy Sanchez type hitter that sprayed the ball all over the field. Duffy was not pleased by this and on top of things had 26 strikeouts and only 3 walks before his demotion. He disappeared for a while, screwed his head back on, reported to Indy, and came back to Pittsburgh after the trade deadline. When he came back he was a different player, hitting close to his PECOTAs (with less power), going .282/.345/.366, stealing 23 of his bases, drawing 17 walks against his 45 strikeouts (not great, but a big improvement). All of those stolen bases with only one caught stealing help out his poor slugging percentage, which we might reasonably assume will improve. If he can just perform at about the level he did after his recall, which I think is reasonable (the whole time after his recall, not the very end of the season where he looked like he did in 2005), he's an acceptable stopgap until McCutchen can get here. I'd still like to see him get on base a little more as a leadoff hitter, but for now I think he's probably our best option. He was a lot better than McLouth, so I think he's probably at least earned the right to lose the job in center again.


Stats from the Baseball Musings Day by Day Database, Yahoo! Sports, and my trusty copy of Baseball Prospectus 2006.