Julio Lugo is back in our lives.
Get used to it.
Lugo, who flashed doubles power and was one of the better offensive shortstops in the game before inking a contract with the Red Sox is returning to try to recapture his former glory — glory that has been in short supply. In fact, the only glory in a Sox uniform I can think of for Lugo is when he capped off the Mother’s Day Miracle… and that was due to an error by Chris Ray.
In Lugo’s two years in Boston, he’s combined for a lovely .237/.314/.343 line.
Not exactly worth the millions he was paid, was it?
Okay, so that does short shrift to Lugo. If you throw out his disastrous first half in 2007, he’s hit for a cumulative .274/.339/.368. Is that good enough to escape our ire?
Well, no. But it’s enough to make him less damning.
Part of Lugo’s appeal was his fantastic range at short. That range hasn’t disappeared, but the errors were out in force in 2008, as it was for much of his career save 2007.
While the pecking order clearly deliniates Lugo as the starting shortstop over Nick Green, it will be hard for Lugo to justify starting full-time over Green, at least in the outset. Sure, Tito will probably hide behind the fact that Lugo needs to get his feet wet, be brought along slowly, etc. etc. etc. But Nick Green has been very, very impressive.
Through Sunday’s capper against the Yankees, Green was hitting .302/.375/.488 While this is with a .355 BABIP (through Saturday’s games), BABIP for a hitter is not as tried and true as it is for a pitcher. (All pitchers can tend to normalize around .300.)
eBABIP and xBABIP tell a better story, and Green’s expected BABIP is .339. (xBABIP is not calculable at the moment for someone with inferior math skills just as myself.)
He also has a 21.9 percent line drive percentage, similar to his 21.3 percentage over his career.
All this is a convoluted way to say that right now, both offensively and defensively, Nick Green has been better than Lugo ever was in a Sox uniform.
Green was hot in ST, and I cant decide if its just a continuance of that, playing against inferior competition and just building confidence to this point, or if he made an adjustment we don’t know about. Historically, evidence would lead to the latter. There have, however, been players who suddenly figured things out (like Melvin Mora)… is Green one of those?
At this moment, no one knows.
But we are definitely about to find out if Lugo can fend off Green.
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A short list of greens better than Julio Lugo, in life and/or baseball:
- Monster
- Ivy
- Grass
- Grocer
- An anthropomorphization of the color’s abstract concept
- Sean
- Shawn
- Hanks _____berg
- Khalil _____e
…
- Nick
Ha! You forgot:
- Eggs and Ham
- Day
- Onions (by Booker T. and the MGs)
and, of course, the MBTA – Line, running right past Fenway. (Hopefully Lugo will be cleaning out his locker and taking that one to Logan soon.)
Don’t forget the “_____, _____ grass of home”!!
Evan: You posit two possibilities — increased confidence or some kind of adjustment. A third possibility is much, much more likely: career scrub who’s had a hot month. Nick Green is a 30-year-old utility infielder. He’s bounced from minors to majors and back again, and from organization to organization.
His career stats are .244/313/355 in 847 major league at-bats. With the Sox, he’s hit .300 in 48 at-bats. That’s what you call a small sample size. The weight of historical evidence suggests that, if given substantial playing time, Nick Green will wind up hitting around .240 again, with no power and a few walks.
I suspect that there will be a job-share for a while, at least until Lugo shows he is fully healthy. I also suspect that, sooner or later, Lugo will get the bulk of playing time, and Green will return to his customary utility role. And as much as Lugo’s contract annoys the hell out of me, I think that would be the right decision.
I’m a better player than Lugo.
Green has had like four good games, not much of a sample size.
The best move for the Sox would probably be to send Green to Pawtucket, and use Lugo as Marcos’ backup.
You’re very smart
JV,
I do agree with you. I apologize for not being clear, but I was more intimating that the increased confidence option was fluky — a hot month, as you say. I didn’t mean to intimate that the increased confidence was sustainable.
Post of the day.
he’s better than Cora. Cora’s #s aren’t that good either.
i agree
Nick & Julio, Julio & Nick. If either one can perform at the high level they did in ST until Lowrie returns, then we will have a good SS through the first half. If not, this is where Theo’s slush fund will come in handy.
I would rather have Lugo *healthy*, that is most important. With Lowrie out a while, the SS position becomes a little more secure with Lugo there if Green starts to cool off, which will probably happen.