Alex is Gonzo

November 26th, 2009 | by Darryl Johnston |

Alex is Gonzo

Alex Gonzalez signs with the Toronto Blue Jays

Well, so much for that.

Red Sox fans who made the assumption that slick-fielding Alex Gonzalez would be re-signed by the Red Sox, just had their hopes dashed. Toronto, in a effort to replace Marco Scutaro, signed Gonzalez to a one-year deal.

Red Sox Nation never rests — even on Thanksgiving Day — as evidenced by the outcry and angst towards Theo Epstein on the Boston Herald’s comments section. Man, some of you really loved Alex Gonzalez.

Gonzalez played some nifty defense in Boston. Some nights he looked like a magician with more tricks than GOB. His defensive Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) over 150 games was 10.5, putting him 5th overall in Major League Baseball for shortstops. His defense trailed only Elvis Andrus, Adam Everett, Caesar Isturis and Jack Wilson respectively.

His offense on the other hand, is a little misleading. While he maintained a .284 batting average as a Red Sox, it occurred in just 148 at-bats. Sample size, sample size, sample size.

Look deeper into the numbers and you can see his BABIP was buoying the average. Gonzalez’ BABIP was .325, which is pretty high for a guy who hits line drives at just a 16% clip. Basically, one can expect that over a full season of 450+ at-bats, that BABIP will level off below .300 and leave Gonzo with a batting average of less than .250.

So what, right? He can field and that’s all that matters. I understand this sentiment from Red Sox fans. We have watched terrible shortstops misplay and fumble balls in the infield for years since the departure of Nomar Garciaparra. Nothing is more frustrating than watching Edgar Renteria or Julio Lugo commit error after error and piss away games in a Red Sox uniform. Last year we watched Gonzalez make plays he had no business getting to and made outs on every ball hit to him. It was a nice change of pace and a source of relief. Gonzalez had just one error in 44 games as a Red Sox in 2009.

Add in the fact that no one wants to see Jed Lowrie as the staring shortstop and the outcry for him is louder. The oft-injured, Punch and Judy-hitting Lowrie, has instilled zero confidence in anyone that turned on NESN. At one point, I really believed that Lowrie was a gem in the making and would prove his critics wrong, but at this point, I have stopped believing.

So now Gonzalez is a Blue Jay and in late April, the Red Sox will be at the Rogers Centre to face Toronto for the first time of the 2010 season. At some point in that first game, Gonzalez is going to rob a Red Sox hitter of a base hit and arms will fly up across the Nation. “See? I TOLD you we shoulda re-signed Gonzalez. Stupid Theo.”

Unless of course, Boston brokers a blockbuster deal to acquire a superstar shortstop. I highly doubt this will happen, so you can all fully-expect this comment about Gonzalez to be uttered simultaneously across America.

I enjoyed watching Gonzalez as much as the next guy. But it’s important to remember that he was a stretch-run upgrade at shortstop for the Red Sox. He is not a full-season solution with his .310 on-base percentage. Offensively, Gonzalez was worth just a half-win over a replacement player in the 2009 season. If you are unfamiliar or still unwilling to accept ‘new’ statistics in baseball, you are ignoring the very measurements that the Boston Red Sox use to value players. You really should start learning about sabermetrics and look at baseball players through a new lens.

Gonzalez was fun to watch as a fielder, but the Red Sox need a real solution.

The answer isn’t magic, but the Sox have something up their sleeves.

Darryl Johnston is the Red Sox correspondent for Fanball.com. He has many years of sports writing under his championship belts. Email him – redsoxdj@gmail.com