(On perception of J.D. Drew) There’s always been a descrepency between how valuable a player he is and how he’s viewed by a certain element of the fan base, and the media in particular. There’s been a lot of strides in the game in terms of how people properly value players based on more meaningful statistics. Drew is sort of a touchstone so to speak for that because you actually look at the underlying performance and things that really matter as far as winning games and not winning games, he’s been over the length of the contract one of the 10 most valuable outfielders in baseball. Over the last two years I think he’s been one of the top two or three in the league, and this past year, again, one of the top two or three most valuable outfielders in the American League. And yet if you simplify the game down to what somebody’s batting average was, how many home runs they hit or how many RBIs they had, which is what we all grew up doing but by today’s standards is a pretty primitive way to look at the game.
From a straight objective standpoint, what he contributes offensively and what he contributes defensively, and add in baserunning so it’s the total value of the player, on a rate basis he was outstanding and there aren’t too many outfielders who compare to what he did.
(Is Drew worth the contract?) What he’s done the first three years of that contract, just looking at straight free agent dollars — obviously you can’t compare him to an arbitration market, or a pre-arb player — what he’s done qualitatively and when you even factor in the amount he’s played over these three years, yeah, he’s come out to a tick more than $14 million per year.
(On Drew not driving in runs) This year it was sort of freakish how well he performed offensively and how few runs he drove in in the lineup. Start with the basic premise that that type of player is always going to be better at scoring runs than driving in runs in because while he does have a high slug, his on-base skills, those are his strengths because he’s on base a lot and he’s a terrific baserunner. He’s going to score more runs. When somebody who tends to walk a lot tends to drive in fewer runs than somebody who puts the ball in play a lot. In Drew’s case he’s an extreme because he walks at a tremendously high rate. Ted Williams has been criticized over and over again, hey runner on third and less than two outs you have to expand the zone and swing at something that’s a ball just to drive the runner in. Well, Williams wouldn’t do that. He would take his walk and he was criticized for it. Wade Boggs was criticized for it. J.D. doesn’t do it. Some hitters come out of their approach and put the ball in play in RBI situation and drive in runs and some hitters don’t do that. Drew is the type of hitter who doesn’t do it, and to be honest with you as an organization we don’t mind if guys don’t come out their approach. It might cost you not driving in runs here or there but in the long run, staying in one’s approach which is getting in a hitters count, getting a pitch you can drive and then driving that ball, and if not then taking your walk, in our mind that’s more fundamentally more important.
There’s labels that tend to happen. People who don’t like Drew will call him uncaring or apathetic or aloof. People who like him will say he has ice in his veins. Then these narratives may or may not even be true, so people who don’t like a player like that will say, ‘He doesn’t care. He doesn’t come through in the clutch.’ They just start these broad labels that aren’t necessarily true. Can you think of a hitter who has had more big hits, more big home runs for us the past three season in the postseason in the last three seasons than Drew? He has more postseason RBIs the past three years than any player that we have. So this narrative sort of takes a life of it own and it’s not always true.
(On not valuing such stats as RBI as some others) If we both grew up in schools that taught us the Earth was flat and then all of a sudden when we went out to get a job as a surveyor and the first thing they taught us in school and the first thing they taught us in school was that the Earth was round it would be tough for you to accept that but over time you would start to operate in which the world is round and make better decisions based on that and that’s sort of the way the game is evolving. I actually don’t believe in extremes. I believe that you have to balance it and don’t look exclusively at any one set of numbers. You have to balance in the human element. You have to balance in scouting with objective analysis. But for something that fundamental like using numbers … if you’re using numbers to access offensive performance than don’t use numbers that don’t correlate to scoring runs which then correlates to winning. You might as well use the numbers which best correlate to scoring runs which correlates best to winning.
