Soriano an All Star, Really?
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Plenty of pundits are still seeing red over Manny Ramirez’ staying power—suspension be darned—as an All-Star vote-getter. But if you’re looking for a real travesty in the process, direct your attention to another National League left fielder—one who makes his living in Cubbie blue. Ask not for whom the chad hangs, Alfonso Soriano. It hangs for thee. Sure, the prospect of penciling in a disgraced, post-positive Ramirez (No. 5 among NL outfielders in voting as of Monday) into the league’s starting All-Star lineup is an ugly one.
 I'm just being Manny, so it's ok right? But at least we’ve had the last month to put Ramirez’ offenses out of sight and out of mind. Over the same timeframe, meanwhile, we’ve been forced to watch Soriano (sitting at No. 4 among outfielders) commit crimes against baseball on a daily basis. Forget about the All-Star conversation: Sori’s stat line tells the tale of a man who may not belong in an everyday lineup. His .241 batting average is the 46th-best mark among NL outfielders with at least 100 plate appearances. His .305 on-base percentage is good for 48th. His 14 home runs (third among NL outfielders) likely have earned him a little love from fans, but with a .487 slugging percentage (17th), he hasn’t exactly been a big bopper. Oh, he leads all NL outfielders with five errors. Only two other outfielders in the league have as many as three.  Maybe if you stopped jumping at fly balls you wouldn't get hurt, Alfonso It gets worse. Soriano has posted more strikeouts (60) than hits (54) in 2009. After a productive April (.284 AVG/.364 OBP/.955 OPS), he churned out a .216/.261/.657 May that looks it crawled out of Corey Patterson’s worst nightmare. It takes a special kind of failure to give hitting streaks a bad name, but Soriano has managed to do just that. He’s hit safely in six straight dating back to May 31, but has recorded just one hit per contest for a .207 average (6-for-29) over the stretch. Soriano has always run hot and cold. In that regard, his current misery is nothing new. Prior to this season, Fonsy’s career featured seven individual months in which he hit less than .240 and posted an on-base percentage lower than .300. An eighth instance—his .207 AVG and .302 OBP in June 2006—just missed the cut. But outside of an injury-shortened April 2008 (.192 AVG/.250 OBP/.577 OPS), this past month may have been the streaky slugger’s worst work yet. As a Cub, Soriano looked like he’d settled down a touch. He vascillated reliably between .300 and .280 in his first two seasons in Chicago, and had spent only a single day below the latter mark after June 1 as a North Sider. We all knew that he could still stink it up in short bursts—his 3-for-28 showing in consecutive NLDS appearances hasn’t slipped our minds quite yet—but we thought the bumpiest days of Mr. Soriano’s Wild Ride were behind us.  Haha Until now, of course. There are plenty of reasons why a Chicago offense that led the NL in scoring and finished second in batting average last year currently ranks 13th in both of those categories. Aramis Ramirez has missed a month with a shoulder injury. Milton Bradley has been equal parts unreliable and unproductive. Derrek Lee didn’t show up until the middle of May. Geovany Soto has been kidnapped by pod people who look none too familiar with the art of hitting. Instead of carrying the slack, though, Soriano has served as another piece of dead weight. He’s built a career on following up terrible stretches with torrid ones. But at 33, the line between just another slump and an off-the-cliff decline is tenuously thin (evidently, some big guy in Boston is having the same problem). Recall that the Cubs are on the hook for Soriano’s services for another five seasons, to the tune of $18 million a year. Or if you’re a Cubs’ fan with any sharp objects at hand, maybe don’t. Then again, the news from this season hasn’t been all bad: We’ve learned that the North Siders have a perennial All-Star on their hands. If only they had a baseball player, too. ———————————————————————————————————————————————— National League Outfield Rankings (Based on OPS)
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