Right and Wrong (Inaugural Edition)

Believe it or not, I have a long-standing history of judging baseball players, and a lot of times I'm just flat out mean. There is always an educated reason for the stances I take, and there are three logical directions that my projections of a player's future can go:

1) The player proves me correct by being just as good or bad as I claimed he would be.
2) The player proves me incorrect by being markedly better or worse than I claimed he would be.
3) The player doesn't perform well enough or badly enough to fall into either of the first two categories. (More often than not, this is the case).

I've decided it's time to address the instances in which a player has clearly fallen into those first two categories. It's time to admit when I've been brashly negative toward a player who blossomed, and it's also time to rub everyone's ugly faces in the piles of my accurate prognostications. That said, if I've mocked a player's appearance or off-the-field proclivities, tough shit. I'm not apologizing. (Julian Tavarez looks like someone threw darts into his face and Sidney Ponson would drink whiskey off a bathroom floor). Anyway, here we go.

When I was reading Spencer's last post, it occurred to me that I've been a bit of an asshole to Brian Roberts, and that he deserves better. He's developed into a very solid starting second baseman, and I should treat him as such when I speak or write of him. While I haven't honestly spoke about Brian Roberts to much of anyone recently, or written about anything at all in months, I vow to place him in proper regard from this point forward. He deserves it! May we take a look at Roberts' improvement over the years. First off, here are the first four seasons of Roberts' career:

2001: .253/.284/.341 in 273 AB
2002: .227/.308/.297 in 128 AB
2003: .270/.337/.367 in 460 AB
2004: .273/.344/.376 in 641 AB

As you can plainly see, I had ample reason to think that Roberts' early 2005 home run binge was all sorts of bullshit. He was terrible. By 2004, though, he actually had proven that he wasn't nearly as bad as initial showing with the Orioles would suggest. Though he had yet to really add anything resembling power, he was starting to gradually increase his walk rate enough to almost warrant being a major leaguer. Almost. And then this happened...

2005: .314/.387/.515 in 561 AB
2006: .286/.347/.410 in 563 AB
2007: .290/.377/.432 in 621 AB
2008: .296/.375/.489 in 362 AB

As you can see, Brian Roberts got a whole lot better. In fact, the aforementioned statistical spike that caused me to develop physical ailments in early 2005 would fail to subside for the duration that season. Roberts was simply fantastic, posting a .902 OPS as a second baseman. He later came back to earth, and his performance since has been indicative of what one should reasonably expect from him. He's a very good starting second baseman and nothing less. Cough, steroids, cough. I'm a very small, petty individual.