That center fielder is Po-sin!!!! ba..ba,ba,ba....ba babumpita ba!
With no inspiring centerfield options in the organization, the Twin Cities River Monsters checked the cracks in their sofa cushions and pulled together enough nickels to sign aging CF Po-sin Shi to a one year contract worth roughly $3.08 million. The soon to be 37 year old is coming off the worst season of his career batting just .195/.299/.310. Which is kinda funny because in my last article I said it would be really hard to find a worse offensive option then we had last year with Arthur Daniel, whose .252/.327/.356 line is starting to look quite nice.
Such is the life of a baseball GM though. Sell high, buy low. Po-sin put up a 3.4 WAR season just 3 years ago, followed by 1.8 in just 286 AB in 2051. What caused a massive decline in 2052? Many GM's might make a quick decision and say, "He's old, duh?"
Well, upon digging deeper we see that Long Beach used Shi as the everyday CF. His 131 appearances against LHP(.156/.206/.207) clearly dragged down his overall production as his VS RHP stats(.208/.330/.347) are much closer to his career overall line of (.249/.349/.342). Plus, the one aspects of platoons that often gets over looked is that if you play a guy like Shi VS LHP(4/4/4/5/6), running into lefty starters is going to limit his hot streaks and prolong his cold streaks. So even when he does face righties, he's often taking a percentage hit off his hard coded abilities.
Now that I've sold you on this old car, let's be real. Po-sin is not here to save the team or be a major upgrade. He is a very similar player to the departing Daniel with each player trading some pro's and cons. Daniel is the better defender, hits for a higher average and is at least somewhat passable VS LHP. While Po-sin has more power, is a little better baserunner and a has considerably higher career walk rates(12.9% vs 9.2%) and Pi/PA(4.06 VS 3.81).
The main difference here is salary. Twin Cities didn't have to commit to 3 years on either of the 30+ centerfielders. Cause let''s be real, the only value from these two players is their ability to play CF. Once either loses range, they are going to be negative contributors as neither hit enough to be a corner.
A side story of this signing is that Po-sin Shi will finally be joining Felipe Vega in the outfield. Those two, along with Sawyer Slizz(who ironically enough is on the trade block) were once considered to be Brooklyn's Outfield of the future before I made a terrible deal sending Shi to California(Sacramento) because I thought he would be too old for my window. Shi ending up having a career year(5.2 WAR) in 2043, the season Brooklyn made it to the Cartwright Cup.
