After this past weekend, I guess I had draft on my mind, and while looking at Richie Sexson's Baseball-Reference page, I took special notice of the fact that he was a 24th round pick. Isn't that a little low for a guy on the cusp of 300 home runs?
Indeed, it was. I spreadsheeted every 300-homer hitter ever drafted (the draft started in '65) and, as it turns out, everyone other than Mike Piazza was drafted higher than Sexson. Much, much higher, it almost all cases.
That got me thinking--taking the round he was drafted in into account, Richie Sexson has really had a wildly successful baseball career. And maybe that's why the boos wound him.
I make more sense in the column that came out of this thinking, which rand in today's P-I.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Column in This Morning's P-I
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3 comments:
Sexson shouldn't get any relief because of where he was drafted 15 years ago. Nobody, not athletes, politicians, or anyone else should be evaluated for the job they used to do (i.e. play minor league/high school baseball). You get paid, and you should be judged according to, the job you currently do. The Mariners aren't paying Richie to be the guy who was drafted 671st in 1993.
You're both right. Richie Sexson came from humble beginnings (meaning both Bush Prairie, WA and the 24th round of the draft), which is something to root for.
But now, he's paid to produce at a high level but isn't. At the moment, Yuniesky Betancourt has a higher slugging percentage than Sexson despite earning one tenth as much as Sexson and being roughly one tenth the size of Sexson.
Interesting take. I never really thought about it that way. And I don't think Seth was trying to say that we should cut the guy some slack; I think he was trying to say, "Try and get inside his head for a minute, then go back to booing him because he sure sucks right now."
On a side note, I read a lot of the reader comments on the P-I's site. I suppose that's where Buzz Bissinger gets his extreme hate for the interwebs ...
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