Pat Burrell Being Pat Burrell
Pat Burrell August 10th. 2009, 10:00amPat Burrell has received a lot of heat from Rays fans, including us, this season and rightfully so. After signing a two-year, $16 million free agent contract, Burrell has been a huge disappointment, hitting only .227-9-42 in 77 games. All of this has been magnified by the recent hot bat of Willy Aybar and culminated in Burrell recently being benched for a couple of games to work on his swing.
So how bad has Pat’s bat been? Actually, not that bad, at least recently.
Over the last 27 games, Burrell is hitting .240 with 6 home runs and 19 RBI. Seems fairly pedestrian, but let’s take a look at how that compares to his career average…
As you can see, his batting average and OBP are both still down a tad, but all other numbers are actually above his career-average.
So why do so many still want Burrell on the bench? There are probably a couple of factors: 1) His numbers were so bad in the first half of the season, no matter what he does now, his numbers still look awful; 2) We all heard that Burrell was a streaky hitter. We have seen his bad streak and we are still waiting for a hot streak, not an average streak.
Both of those reasons are based on what Burrell did in the first-half. It sucked. It was really bad. But it is also in the past. All that matters now is what he can do over the final 51 games. And these numbers indicate that Burrell is doing exactly what the Rays signed him to do. And if that is true, there is no reason Burrell should not be the most-days DH.
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” And these numbers indicate that Burrell is doing exactly what the Rays signed him to do. ”
Finally. I’m been down on Pat but it seems like he’s starting to pick up what he dropped in the first half.
“Why do so many fans want Burrell on the bench”
Let me answer that please!…so I don’t have to sit there ever night and watch him strike out (enough with Pena/Navaro combo),ground into double plays (running his fat ass off, only to get out) and not hitting in clutch situations ( 42 RBI / 6th or 7th on the team)…
And I guess the best one was Aybar(better hitter) sitting while this guy plays, and he makes out after out!
Outside of that I don’t care if he plays…I just wish it was for someone else!
First of all, for the people calling for Aybar… remember, he didn’t exactly tear it up to start the season. He was in a real big slump. In fact, I’m sure Maddon would’ve loved to make Aybar the every day 2nd baseman instead of Zorilla when Aki went down… but, Zorilla beat Aybar at every turn.
As for PtB, I’ll keep repeating this for everyone: The Rays put their eggs in PtB’s basket. He’s the right-handed power hitter the Rays needed last year. For them to be successful, he has to get hot. If he doesn’t, address it in the off-season. But, you’re not going to get him hot riding the pine this year. He has to keep playing.
Exactly. And not to mention that the whole focus of this post was to point out that he looks to be on track now. It’s about what he brings now, not what he failed to do in the first half of the season.