Posted on April 25, 2006 by Andrew Flynn
Jose Reyes’ Appointment with Destiny
Baseball Prospectus writer Jim Baker had this tidbit in Prospectus Matchps:
All this talk of batting lines has gotten me to thinking about what Jose Reyes has been up to. Until he did not start Sunday night’s game in San Diego, he was on a streak that saw him make at least three outs in 13 consecutive games. This is nothing like a record, but it shows that Reyes has not lost his out-making touch. Last year, he tied for the third-most outs in a single season:
Top 10 Outmakers of the 20th & 21st Centuries
551: Omar Moreno, Pittsburgh (1980)
530: Horace Clarke, New York Yankees (1970)
529: Jose Reyes, New York Mets (2005)
529: Omar Moreno, Pittsburgh (1982)
529: Sandy Alomar, California (1971)
528: Omar Moreno, Pittsburgh (1979)
528: Sandy Alomar, California (1970)
526: Juan Samuel, Philadelphia (1984)
525: Alfredo Griffin, Toronto (1980)
521: Bobby Richardson, New York Yankees (1964)
521: Roger Metzger, Houston (1972)This season, Reyes has an outside shot of bettering them all, even the grand imperial high-exalted most excellent master himself: Omar Moreno. A number of things have to align just so for Reyes to make this happen. His manager,Willie Randolph, must continue to ignore all appeals to reason and bat him leadoff. He has to start every day and refrain from walking–something he hasn’t had a problem with in the past. He himself has to maintain a batting average in the .240 range. The Mets need to score enough runs so that he’s getting five at bats rather than four (or play a lot of extra inning games). Reyes is a high-percentage base stealer, something Moreno was not, so he’s not going to generate many outs that way. At this moment, projecting from what Reyes has done in the first 19 games, he would make 554 outs in 2006, a new all-time record. (Yes, it’s a small sample size, but it’s one that does not run counter to past performance.)
There really isn’t a lot of play there, so it seems unlikely he’ll achieve outmaking immortality in 2006. A more likely eventuality is that he betters last year’s total but falls short of Moreno’s grandeur. In other words: look out Horace Clarke!
Of course, this doesn’t mean as much in Rotisserie, where his steals make him quite valuable, hence the $38 price tag this season.