Paul Lo Duca: Ulti-Man Crush

By Matt Himelfarb
Posted Monday, July 2, 2007

Never in my life have I become so convinced that the art of journalism my parents and grandparents once knew has been destroyed.

Maybe it was the O.J. Simpson trial. Maybe it’s because after that thing called the internet was invented, that the biggest advertising content allocated by your local newspaper became the weekly coupons to Stop 'N Shop. Or maybe it’s because most journalists feel an enormous amount of insecurity, and any article that doesn’t contain any type of racial bigotry is likely to be tossed aside from the public view. But hey, it’s not as though the interest in possibly catastrophic decisions has really waned. After all, politicians can buy that.

Need another example? Enter Paul Lo Duca.

Before Paul “The Computer” DePodesta even traded Paul Lo Duca, the anti-saber world, a.k.a. ninety percent of the mainstream media, had decided that DePodesta was a number crunching stat-head who wore glasses. A flat out gutsy move on DePodesta’s part that spun Lo Duca along with reliever Guillermo Mota and outfield Juan Encarncion to the Florida Marlins for starter Brad Penny, and first baseman Hee-Seop Choi only reinforced that theory. Never mind the fact that Lo Duca and Juan Encarnacion would go on to compile terrible OPS. numbers of .692 and .702 respectively. Never mind the fact Brad Penny is one of the best, not to mention cheap, starters in the National League right now (10-1, 2.00 ERA). After all, as the media ascertained, Lo Duca was “The Heart and Soul” of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and was surely the reason as to why they were knocked out of the playoffs in the first round.

As Baseball Prospectus put it, somewhere out there was a Frank Losser/Hoagy Carmichael summarizing the Dodgers' beat writers position on the subject: “Heart and soul, I fell in love with you? Heart and soul, the way a fool would do, madly, because you held me tight? And stole a kiss in the night?` The erstwhile heart, soul, and solar plexus of the Dodgers, for whom sun coast scribes still nurse giant, unfulfilled man-crushes, turns out to be a run-of-the-mill ballplayer when it comes to doing the things like hitting? And fielding; only the main parts of a ballplayer’s job.”

So than, according to the script, the media is all over Lo Duca again in 2006. This is hardly surprising, considering Lo Duca was fairly productive for a catcher (.318/.355/.418). But hey, his affair and bitter divorce scandal was a slam dunk for the Daily News, making the front page for quite a long time, as I recall.

So now we find ourselves in 2007 contemplating whether the clubhouse is ready to fall apart, following a month in which most Mets fans, as well as the beat writers, get on the entire team’s case for not being clutch. Well, Lo Duca did his part defending the former, but for all the times he came out and said how the Mets had to step it up and show more enthusiasm, he’s hurt the Mets numerous times, evident by his WPA (win probability added) of -0.45.

What’s more? Well, for the second half, the Mets might as well consider going to Ramon Castro as their everyday catcher. Using a simple win shares above bench barometer, you can see that Castro is actually slightly more productive than the average replacement level player, while Lo Duca is slightly below. This is most likely because, due to a lack of power, Lo Duca’s OPS (.708) is very low. Add that to him being an historically bad second half player, and his defensive shortcomings, and you have one heck of a bench player.

So maybe, just maybe, when Lo Duca is a free agent next year, the mainstream media will start looking at things objectively.
 

You can contact Matt at: matthimelfarb@gmail.com and check out www.cyclonesnation.wordpress.com