Does Chase deserve Gwynn-like respect?
As a life long Padre fan one must love Tony Gwynn and everything he did for the franchise. The guy was a stand up citizen, good man, and GREAT ball player. There is however a new kid on the block that has played some serious ball, and isn't getting the kind of fan support one would think he'd already earned. And this year he's having his career year and still many don't root for him, so I thought we should take a quick look and compare Gwynn's career year to what Chase Headley is doing this year to see if maybe we fans should get off our high horse, realize what we have in a player, and start rooting for the 3bag, that we might end up losing by way of trade, before it's too late. And for the record in no way am I suggesting that Chase Headley is the next Tony Gwynn.
Now both play a perceived "power" position, so I'm not attempting to cherry pick stats here. Those positions are most often gauged by HR's, RBI, XBH's and now OPS (on base pct + Slg pct). Stats like BA have been looked at as less important so long as the other stats are being produced. I for one disagree with that, but for the sake of this lets go ahead and play that game...
1997, Gwynn's 15th year in the league, was his best production year by far. He hit 17 HR's and drove in 119 RBI, while pounding out a total of 68 xbh's and posting an OPS of .957 ....
2012, Headley 4th full season, at the end of August he's already hit 24HR's and driven in 92 RBI, with 50 XBH's, and an OPS of .847
Headley 24hr/ 92rbi/ 50 xbh/ .847ops
Gwynn 17hr/ 119rbi/ 68xbh/ .957ops
For further comparison, here is Tony Gwynn's career avg season, and this is the guy we all fell in love with. Compare that to what Headley is doing this year and it's even more impressive. Add to this that Headley is doing this while playing 81 games in one of the toughest ballparks to hit in, and I really don't get some of the fans dislike for Headley at all. Seems to me they'd understand how special this guy might be.
Gwynn 9 hr/ 76rbi / 51xbh / .847ops ( this was Gwynn's career avg season that we fell in love with )
Headley 24hr/ 92rbi/ 50 xbh/ .847ops (still a month left to add to this)
2012 final stat line for Chase Headley
31hr/ 115rbi/ 64 xbh/ .875ops
Headley has almost exactly 1 month of play time left to add to his stats, but if you take a quick look at this doesn't one player, Headley, deserve a bit more fan respect since he's clearly having a fantastic season ?
Anyway just my thought this morning that I wanted to get down before it left the grey matter...
T.Pichierri - Planet Padres Writer
Play Ball !!!
