2007 Preview Part 7

One of the Joses must be a useful baseball player.

This is the fourth part of a running season preview in which I look at things that I think have to happen in order for the Pirates to be a decent baseball team in 2007 and decide how likely I think they are to happen. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, and Part 6 here.

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. One of the spots in the Pirates line-up will be filled by a player named Jose. Both of them could be good and actually were good at various points last year. Both of them could also be bad and were quite bad at most points last year. The Pirates need one of them to step up and be some kind of consistent offensive performer if they're hoping to have some kind of offense that approaches average this year. The question is, is it possible?

Let's look at 2006 first. Jose Castillo was literally one of the worst regular players in all of baseball from June through the end of the season. No joke. He was also 23 runs below average in the field. Simply put, I have no idea why Castillo comes into the season as the incumbent for the last spot in the starting lineup. He has not earned it. Bautista got off to a good start with the Pirates, but also tailed off badly from mid-July onwards. Clearly, relying on either of these players to be any kind of offensive contributor is a poor strategy.

So let's look at the projections. PECOTA puts Castillo at .264/.314/.403 and Bautista at .259/.338/.436. Those are pretty similar to the ZiPS projections I used in January to analyze the lineup, though PECOTA is a bit more bullish on Castillo. When I used Baseball Musings' lineup tool to break things down with the ZiPS, the difference between the two was 20 runs over the course of the season. That's pretty significant. Still, maybe we can assume that there was some kind of outside factor affecting Castillo's play last year. He was certainly overweight and is claiming personal problems had him down. To the naked eye, he does look slimmer this spring, but it's mostly impossible to judge if he's fixed the fatal flaw in his swing (screw it, his whole swing was the fatal flaw last year) in only 20 ABs.

There are several problems here. First off, a good team simply shouldn't have to rely on either one of these two as a power source. Unfortunately, a team that employs Chris Duffy, Jack Wilson, Ronny Paulino, and (to a lesser extent) Freddy Sanchez has to get power from somewhere and Bautista and Castillo are both more likely to provide home runs than any of the guys in the above group. It's also insane that someone that had the second half that Castillo did comes into camp as the incumbent (and I do think he did no matter what Tracy or Littlefield said). That either happened because the team holds Castillo too highly in regard (quite possible) or they thought something happened last year that kept him from performing (less likely, I think). I think Bautista is the better hitter of the two. They seem to have similar power but Bautista actually knows how to take a pitch. They're also of similar age, Bautista is exactly 5 months older than Castillo.

The Pirates like to pretend that defense is a huge divider between the two (in favor of Castillo), but I don't think it is. Bautista was about average at third and in center last year while Castillo was awful at second (though he can be expected to be about average this year, I think). Freddy Sanchez will be good at second or third, I don't think he's the issue here.

So what to do? I think Bautista is the best option for the team, but I think the Pirates disagree. Even Bautista is not a great option for the type of player the Pirates need. As I said before, counting on either to be consistent is probably a poor choice because there's really little proof that either can be consistent at all.