Angels bloggers to get their opinion:
5th best in the AL, 10th in all of baseball. His boneheadedness, and inconsistency keeps him...
— Mike Hllywa (@mike_hllywa) January 24, 2013
haven't looked at all the stats, but between 8th and 12th best.
— Garrett Wilson (@MonkeyWithAHalo) January 24, 2013
in AL he's top 4. Jeter, A.Cabrera, Andrus,
— LAAngelsInsider.com (@LAANGELSINSIDER) January 24, 2013
Amongst the few that responded, most were favorable assessments. Not everyone would necessarily agree though.
The pros at Baseball Prospectus are not as high on Aybar. When the shortstop signed a 4-year, $35 million deal last April, R.J. Anderson had this to say about Aybar:
"On offense, Aybar is prone to having a lot of quick at-bats. He doesn’t walk much, nor will he strike out a ton. He relies on putting the ball in play. With the glove, Aybar has a Gold Glove and the previously aforementioned erratic defensive metrics. That makes Aybar a prone target for snark, but the reality is that he passes the eye test. The overall package makes for, at worst, an average shortstop."
While Dave Cameron at Fangraphs was also not too high on Aybar after his contract:
"This also represents a pretty significant commitment from the Angels towards a player whose skills aren’t generally valued all that highly on the open market."What do we take from this? Perhaps these assessments have less to do with Aybar than the few number of elite shortstops in the league. As I mentioned in my previous post, Aybar is not great but good. And it's important to note that neither Anderson or Cameron went so far to call Aybar a poor player. They just questioned the contract for a player of Aybar's caliber.
Which can safely lead us back to our original assessment: if Aybar continues the consistency he's had over the past 2 years, then the Angels commitment to Aybar should come without much regret.
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