Ray Durham says he feels like shit:
Ray Durham, nursing a sore left hamstring, took a timeout Saturday from a 2007 season he called “embarrassing. By far, this is the worse season I’ve had in my professional career.”
One season after he batted .293 with 26 homers and 93 RBIs, earning a two-year contract and a since-lost job as the fifth-place hitter, Durham is languishing at .222 with 10 homers and 61 RBIs. Moreover, his defense has gone south as he fumbles too many routine grounders.
Durham confessed to a no-no, sometimes dragging his struggles at the plate to second base in the next inning.
“They’re always saying not to let your offense affect your defense,” he said. “In a sense, yeah. In a sense, no. Of course, I’m a competitor, so I’m thinking about what I can do differently. If I’ve just lined out, in the next inning I’ll get a groundball I normally catch and my mind is somewhere else.”
He’s driven in just 14% of the runners who’ve been on base for him, he has the worst batting average among all second basemen in the NL, posting an anemic .222/.302/.354 .656 OPS line. He’s grounded into 16 double plays, he’s only got 32 extra base hits…. I mean, for all intents and purposes, he’s playing his way out of baseball…. well, if he were on a real team, that is. 
He’s untradable, and unplayable; which means that, not unlike the Benitez situation, Sabean and Bochy find themselves with little in the way of options. Either keep running him out there every day in the hope that he has a big finish, which might enable you to dump him to somebody; or bench him and play Frandsen.
Neither choice is satisfactory, since he’s making a nice chunk of change, benching him is more than just an admission of failure by management –it’s pouring money on the ground to boot– and playing him is killing the team. Predictably, of course.
UPDATE: Chris thinks I’m being too hard on Ray:
Hi John, occasional reader, first time poster.
He’s had some nagging injuries but I think he’s been solid for the Giants. He was no Jeff Kent, who peaked as a Giant and had some monster years, but Durham was putting up between 4-5 wins per season. Not too shabby from the 2B position.
Durham’s rank among NL 2B by VORP from 2003-2006
2003 – 8th
2004 – 3rd
2005 – 6th
2006 – 2ndI’m not sure what you were expecting from Durham? He’s been solid (2003+2005) to great (2004+2006). Of course he’s fallen off a cliff this year but his tenure up until now has been a good one.
A quick look at Durham’s stat page makes me wonder what the hell the BP guys use to come up with VORP.
In ‘03, he played in only 110 games, and had 8 home runs, 33 RBI, and scored 61 runs. 17 home runs in ‘04, 12 in ‘05, 10 this season. His Giants career high in walks is 57, his Giants OBP best is .366, not too bad, but nowhere near the league leaders. He’s never come close to a 200-hit season, or a 30-HR season. For crying out loud, he scored over 100 runs five seasons in a row for the White Sox –and a combined 114 the year before he got here– and has failed to crack that barrier one single time in his five years here…. in fact he’s only cracked 90 runs once.
Fine, he doesn’t have Kent’s home run power, but here’s a question; where are the triples? He’s got speed, he’s got doubles power, he plays in one of the most triples friendly parks in all of baseball; how can he not hit 10, 12 triples a year here? In ‘05, he had none, this season he’s got 2. Noted speed demon Rich Aurilia also has 2, Ryan Klesko has 3, even Molina’s got one.
I mean, comparing his Giants career to his pre-Giants career is an exercise in agony. He averaged 154 games a year for the seven years prior to his arrival. That’s one missed start a month, for seven straight years. He’s missed 52, 42, 20, and 25 games the last four seasons, which has hindered his production, no doubt; but that doesn’t give him a pass, it’s just one more part of why he’s been such a disappointment.
It’s not a home park disadvantage, if anything, he hits better at PacBell. But he starts each season as if he was cast in concrete…. the last three he’s put up a combined .656 OPS, horrible enough to hamstring the team –counting on him to hit either behind or in front of Bonds– for three straight seasons.
I’d say that he’s just failed to meet my expectations, but I’d bet that inside the walls of Sabean’s office; he too cannot believe how many games he’s missed, how ineffective he’s been at driving in runs, how many double plays he’s hit into, and how little impact –for a supposed All-Star second baseman– he’s really had. I know that’s how I feel.
17 Backtalkers
This is what you get when you run a professional sports franchise as if most players were really just about the same AND you fail to prepare for the ending of player contracts at LF/RF, CF, 1B, 2B, C, and 3B at the same time. I don’t seen next season or the next season being much better, just band-aids until a new plan can be developed. Excellent foresight by the Giants, just excellent.
Hence is the problem with trying to put everything you have into winning it all, you completely neglect everything else. Same works for other sports too. Look at the 49ers, when they threw tons of $ at Free Agents and their own players with back loaded contracts and complete and utter disregard for the new salary cap. It totally came back to bite them in the ass, and they still never beat the Packers in the playoffs.
At least on the bright side of things Durham is honest and isn’t making excuses so much for his shitty play. He knows he sucks. Which is more then can be said of other hacks on this team *cough* Zito *cough* or when we had Benitez, blaming everyone BUT himself for his atrocious performances.
A true adult Mr. Durham is. I like him as a player and certainly don’t want him to fail. But, I also figured that last year might lead to a decent “this year,” but probably not a decent “next year.” Durham has my respect for being honest…but I’d rather he be good.
Well, yeah, you guys are right; he’s a classy, stand-up guy. That’s just about what every Giant has been for quite a while. Woody, Snow, Bell, Dunston, I could go on and on.
Me, I’m a prick, and I’m just about the best carpenter within 50 miles of where I live. My clients know I’m a loud-mouth asshole, and they could give a fuck. They say pretty much what I’m saying here ALL THE TIME: Give me a quality pro over a nice guy mediocrity any day.
Durham has been an underperformer for the ENTIRE time he’s been a Giant. To paraphrase Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glenross; “Nice guy, FUCK YOU. Good father…. go home to your wife. DO. YOUR. JOB.”
I’m glad he’s honest, and I mean that. But, Jesus Christ, he’s been a fucking horror show for five years.
Oops, I think I quoted you wrong, it didn’t show up in my post for whatever reason.
I was responding to this in particular “Durham has been an underperformer for the ENTIRE time he’s been a Giant.”
As I said, “I’d rather that he be good.” Nice Glengarry GlenRoss line!
I seem to recall most everyone supporting the Durham re-signing, especially as it was only for two years and at a reasonable cost. Durham’s bad year has been very disappointing, but it seems like anytime a player plays badly his faults are blamed on management while anyone doing well is praised for their own talents.
In the context of when Durham signed, his deal was good. The Giants pretty much had to bring him back because 1) He was the 2nd best hitting second basemen in the NL last year behind Chase Utley and 2) They needed another “power” bat in the lineup. While the verdict is still out on K-Fran, he most likely wasn’t going to hit like Durham did in 2006, turns out neither could Durham but I digress.
The deal was short and cheap (when you consider that Durham was the best 2B option on the market). He’s hit a wall and could be done but I can’t fault Sabean for the deal he gave Ray.
I wonder how healthy Durham is this year? His bat looks slower to me and he seems to get beat a lot on average fastballs. At this point he’s probably living in his own head too much.
I was looking through the archives to see what I wrote. I believe that my view was like this: “Meehhh.” I was pretty sure that Durham was not going to recreate 2006, but, no, you’re right, I didn’t expect him to be this ineffective.
In point of fact, I’d been clamoring for Orlando Hudson (or even Aaron Hill or Ian Kinsler [before he reached the Majors]) for a couple of years now.
But, as I touched on, two of the biggest mistakes that the Giants have made were (imo): 1) complete lack of foresight to diversity the roster and the roster’s salary structure (whether or not the players were/are old or young); and 2) the losing of so many players all at once (2006) w/o any suitable replacements…leading to old and expensive band-aids. Klesko, Aurilia, Durham, Molina [or fat], Roberts, + Sweeney, Feliz, Vizquel, Bonds? Yuck.
John, I made the front page! I’ll try not to get a big head
I thought it was interesting that you pointed out Durhams decrease in runs scored. Durham joined the Giants for his age 31 season and he clearly wasn’t the same speedy guy that he was with the White Sox. He had also been healthy for his White Sox career and Sabean was obviously banking on his continued chances of good health. His leg problems definitely zapped some of his speed which would help in scoring runs. He stole at least 20 bases a year from 1996-2002 but has only reached double digits once with the Giants, when he nabbed 10 in 2003.
The “12 triples a year” argument isn’t really a good one. 12 is just a arbitrary number that you made up, why 12? Durham hit 5 triples in ‘03, 8 in 04′, 0 in 05′, and 7 last year in ‘06. Those aren’t terrible numbers and they showed that Durham still had a little speed and was helped by AT&T in hitting his triples. A common theory among fans for the decline in Durham’s speed was that it was a conscious decision that Durham made to try and keep healthy. I’m not sure if thats true or not but you’ll often hear that argument.
Back to his lack of runs scored, I thought it would be interesting to look at the percentage of Durham batting leadoff for his teams. A leadoff hitter has more chances to get on base and thus, more chances to score runs.
Percentage of Durham’s PA by the leadoff position
1997 – 63%
1998 – 95%
1999 – 88%
2000 – 99%
2001 – 84%
2002 – 42% (also had 53% from the 2-hole)
2003 – 80%
2004 – 99%
2005 – 18% (Durham hit all over the lineup this year, the bulk of his hitting was in the 5 spot)
2006 – 0% (Had 0 PA’s from the leadoff spot. Once again, hit mostly 5th)
Durham scored 95 runs in 2004, which is actually pretty good since he only appeared in 120 games. But you can see that from 2005 onward, he shifted away from the leadoff spot which is going to hurt his ability to score runs. So I think it’s a little unfair to criticize Durham for not scoring as many runs as he did when he played for the White Sox. 3 of the 5 years he’s played with the Giants he hasn’t been leading off.
There are a lot of things wrong with the Giants but in my opinion, up until this year, Durham wasn’t one of them. He was always a solid performer, even if he wasn’t doing what Kent did, and contributed positively to the lineup (being better than league average every year until this oen). He might have not been the same guy that he was with the White Sox but he was still pretty good.
Thanks for the response, I enjoy the site and it’s always good to have more places to talk Giants baseball.
[...] over at the very good Only Baseball Matters, has a ongoing post about Ray Durham. Durahm, like Wile. E Coyote, has fallen off a cliff this year. I’ve talked about Ray’s [...]
Ass Licking Videos…
Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me
…
Young Lesbians Having Sex…
Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me
…
World’s History at Culture Club…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
Play Arcade Games Online…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
Sports Illustrated…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…