It is strange, but true, that Andruw Jones' career is in jeopardy, even before he turns 32 years old. Even with the Dodgers restructuring his contract so he is owed about $5 million for 2009, there does not seem to be a line of teams forming to make a deal for him. The Mets apparently are not interested, and John Fay doesn't think the Reds will be, either, even at a minimum salary.
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Jones looked awful last season, generating the kind of numbers that would earn most players an immediate ticket out of baseball -- he struck out 76 times in 209 at-bats, and had a .158 batting average. In fact, he had more strikeouts than hits and walks
combined (60).
Scouts believe his defense is quickly regressing, largely because … well, he's gotten large. "He's just too heavy to play at the level he used to play at in the outfield," one scout said Saturday.
"He's fat," said another.
Evaluators are not too confident in Jones' ability to undergo a body transformation, because as great as he was in the outfield, he has never been known as a workout freak. Jones is playing winter ball, but he has even looked bad there, reports one highly ranked executive.
The Dodgers will probably end up releasing him before spring training, and somebody will give him a chance. But he needs to show something, in a hurry, because there is a perception within the industry that he might be finished -- despite his age, despite the fact that he slammed 41 homers in 2006.
All of this begs a question: If Jones is in the last days of a career which has included 371 homers, 1,131 RBIs and a lifetime average of .259, how would you gauge his chances for the Hall of Fame? I wrote in a news story Saturday that Jones is a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, and this generated a lot of response, many writing along the lines that this confirms I'm an idiot.
OK, I might actually be an idiot, but that doesn't change the fact that he is a borderline HOF candidate. Five years after he retires, he will get a pretty good chunk of HOF votes -- not the 75 percent required for induction, but enough votes to keep him on the ballot and to keep his candidacy alive for a long time.
Yes, he has struck out a ton, having never learned to consistently lay off breaking pitches low and away, or to take them to right field. But many within the game have viewed him as a difference-making defensive player, the backbone of the best pitching-and-defense team for more than a decade.
Would I vote for him today? No. But keep in mind that more and more, defense is becoming a valued part of a Hall of Famer's candidacy, which is why
Omar Vizquel is likely to gain induction some day. This trend is likely to increase, as statistical formulas for measuring defense become more commonplace.
According to a formula used by baseball-reference.com, these are the players to which
Jones' offensive numbers compare at age 31:
Sammy Sosa,
Johnny Bench,
Ron Santo,
Al Kaline and
Dale Murphy.
Now, Sosa and Bench and Kaline went on to enjoy some more productive seasons after their 31st birthday, and Jones may not. But Jones' defensive standing, especially at a position in which defense is highly valued, is something Sosa and Santo don't have.
If Jones doesn't bounce back, I don't think he'll get into the Hall of Fame. But he's already in the conversation, in the way that Murphy and Santo and
Bernie Williams and
Don Mattingly are all part of the conversation.
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