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By Jeff Todd | at
Email a copy of 'AL Central Notes: Rodon, Chen, Bourn, Rios' to a friend
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unclejesse40
Glad to see Chen getting another shot in the bigs.
a_foreign_film
for any team, particularly small market ones, often the simplest way to improve is to minimize the time played by your worst players. bourn is easily one of cleveland’s worst players. the less he plays, the better off the tribe is.
Lefty_Orioles_Fan
Ahhh Bourn another struggling Boras player.
Just SMH!
stl_cards16
I don’t know what Boras has to do with it. Free agent contracts usually do not work out in the teams favor.
David Coonce
Nothing to do with Boras; Bourn is exactly the kind of guy that ages poorly – no power, few walks, only skill was speed. He has obviously lost a step or more – he stole 10 bases in 16 attempts last season and has attempted just 4 this season. Boras got a team to pay for Bourn’s rapid decline years; this is why teams have analytics departments now. Cleveland dropped the ball on this one; even a cursory glance at the work of Bill James would have given them pause about a 5-year deal for a speed-only guy entering his 30s. Nobody would give a guy with Bourn’s skillset a long-term contract now, knowing what we know about aging curves by player type.
Bob Bunker
I’ve read reports saying that high speed guys decline slower then most. Marginal speed guys lose their speed fast but usually the real speedsters keep being productive longer due to defense and baserunning.
David Coonce
Bourn was a speed-only guy, though. Now that he appears to have lost his speed he has no skills to fall back on. Compare that to a guy like, say, Adam Dunn, who lost most of his athleticism and defensive ability fairly early in his career, but remained a productive major-league player for several years because he drew walks and had power. Frank Thomas was similar, too.
Even Rickey, who was still stealing bases at age 40, had other skills once he lost his bat speed – he drew walks, hit for power, got on base, was a very efficient base-stealer. Thinking of other speed-only guys off the top of my head – Vince Coleman, Willy Taveras, Omar Moreno – all were basically done by age-30. Speed ages poorly, probably more poorly than any other skill.
Lionel Bossman Craft
Not only has the back end of the Chi Sox rotation been bad but so has Chris Sale thus far.
Mikenmn
Bourne has played in ten seasons. Only once has he had an OPS+ of over 100. He was never going to do it with the bat. Speed, base running, and glove was where the value came from in 2009, 10, and 12. He’s probably not done because he’s not that old, but it doesn’t look at all good. Without that contract, he’d probably be a 4th outfielder