Oh Shea

The Baseball Analysts released their second All-OOPs team. I'll let them describe it:

By definition, the players who meet the above criterion are singles hitters who only walk on occasion and rarely slug home runs. In other words, batting average makes up the lion's share of their value. Put another way, the qualifying hitters have low Isolated Discipline (IsoD) and Isolated Power (IsoP). IsoD equals OBP minus AVG, and IsoP equals SLG minus AVG. These isolated stats tell you what's not a part of batting average.

Shea Hillenbrand showed up as the first baseman. Though this is mainly a fun list, it's important to look at in context of the offseason. Players like Hillenbrand, with high average and little else, normally get overpaid by general managers as well as overrated by the media.

It's an old story for many people who pay attention to baseball. Average is a very visible and easy to understand stat. Picking up a guy who hit .300 but had an OBP of .310 will almost always look better to fans than .270/.350. In a year where the Giants have a lot of PR to do as Barry possibly skips town and the players becomes younger and less known to the casual fan - of which the Bay Area holds many - will Brian Sabean go for the overrated name players just to say to fans, "Well, at least we still have Juan Pierre!"