I have been upset about the replacement of Mueller with Mike Lowell at third base mostly because of the combination of Mueller being my favorite player and Lowell's abysmal 2005 season. Lowell's 2005 wasn't just bad, it was horrendous. However, one year, a career doesn't make. So I decided to look at a larger sample, say 5 years. Low and behold my eyes played tricks – over the last five years, Lowell was the better offensive player. Not by much, but by enough. 2005 and 2003 were Mueller's, but 2004, 2002, and 2001 were Lowell's – and Lowell is 3 years younger than Mueller (and less prone to injury as can be seen from Mueller's sagging at bats in 2001, 2002, and 2004).
It's funny, but they're almost the same offensive player. If we call 2005 an injury year for Lowell (mental
and 2004, 2002, and 2001 injury years for Mueller then that leaves 2003 as the honest-comparison year. But in 2003, Mueller's batting-champion year, he wasn't all that much better than Lowell. Plus he was incredibly un-Mueller like – the season was an anomaly year for Mueller while it was a somewhat average year for Lowell. Moving forward two years Mueller was relatively healthy in 2005, Lowell's crappy year, and Mueller only had 4 more RBI's and 13 more runs on the most productive line-up in baseball (I grant that runs and RBI's aren't the most scientific comparison, but still). It could be argued that Mueller wouldn't have been better than Lowell in 2005 if Lowell hadn't been so extremely un-Lowell like.
Here's the stats:
2005 AB SLG OBA RBI R BA
Lowell 500 .360 .298 58 56 .236
Mueller 519 .430 .369 62 69 .292
2004
Lowell 598 .505 .365 85 87 .293
Mueller 399 .446 .365 57 75 .283
2003
Lowell 492 .530 .350 105 76 .276
Mueller 524 .540 .398 85 85 .326
2002
Lowell 597 .471 .346 92 88 .276
Mueller 353 .402 .355 37 51 .266
2001
Lowell 551 .448 .340 100 65 .283
Mueller 210 .448 .403 23 38 .295
It's comforting to see that the Red Sox might be fine at third base in 2006 with the out-ing of Mueller and the in-ing of Lowell - maybe even better, if Lowell returns to pre-2005 form. But the fact remains that Mueller is not an average player. Average players don't win batting titles; average players don't hit grand slams from both sides of the plate in one game; and average players don't get nicknames like "Billy Ballgame." It bothers me that the Boston sports media (and often the Boston fans) tend to re-write a player's history after they leave the Sox. They suddenly lose all the talent that they had while they wore a Boston uniform. As one of the most educated sports towns in the country we have one important thing to learn if we want to have more seasons like 2004 - we need to be baseball fans first, and Red Sox fans second.
As always – thanks for the therapy.
- Pete
