Asshole of the Week: Crisis Averted

Our short _WashingtonNationals nightmare is over. Alfonso Soriano will play left field. Well, he will appear in left field, as he will more than likely take a page from the Manny Ramirez school of outfieldry.

He looks terrified. And so would I, were I a Nats fan

The thing of it is, Soriano should have been thrilled to move away from second base. Baseball fans have long held the conventional wisdom that he's not a good second baseman, but until I looked into this story, I didn't realise that he's an historically bad second baseman. He has the 3rd lowest fielding percentage of the last half-century...over his 5-year career as an everyday 2b he has 105 errors. Next most? The not-well-regarded defensive stylings of Jeff Kent and Ray Durham with 59. Soriano has led MLB in errors at 2b each and every year he has played there. I'd go so far as to say that there is no athlete in recent memory in american sports who has been as singularly inept (with the possible exception of Greg Ostertag) over such a long period in recent memory.

So what was he thinking? Well, first all of the fantasy league owners who had him in keeper leagues. If fielding doesn't matter, he has god-like stats for a middle infielder not named Tejada. As an outfielder, he's a nice player, but not superstar level. Which brings us to the real reason: as a 2b he was something special. Now he's just another poor fielding corner outfielder who hits for power, doesn't get on base, and strikes out like Napoleon Dynamite at a biker bar.