The Captain’s Struggles

The Captain’s offensive struggles have recently become a lot more sobering. When I was watching the Red Sox and Devil Rays play one of the aggravating games earlier this week, I was talking with a friend who, when Varitek stepped up to the plate in a crucial situation, said “teK” – insinuating he was going to strike out. Sadly, Varitek did.

When your catcher, your captain, is now the sort of person where you can predict outs and even find a creative way to incorporate these outs into the name (teK, awfulman, rent-a-wreck, etc.) … well, something’s wrong.

As you can see, I’ve put together a splits table on the left with quite a few splits for Varitek. There’s a lot of curious happenings going on here. Let’s break it down further.

Varitek does not like the home-cooking anymore. He has a career .773 OPS on the road, .823 at home, but these splits have reversed themselves recently. In 2005, he had a .754 OPS at Fenway, and a shocking .948 OPS on the road. In 2004, this was reversed – .960 at home, .784 on the road.

His batting average is ten points off from Fenway and road games, but his Isolated Eye at home is 0.67, while it’s 0.96 on the road. The discrepancies in slugging also widely vary.

The lefty and righty splits show a clear split – Varitek “prefers” righties. At least the Isolated Eye and slugging correspond more when compared to each other than the home and road changes.

Day and night – an appropiate cliche for many of Varitek’s splits. He rakes in the day, but is terrible at night. Now, I recently learned that Varitek has a new child, which may be contributing to some of his struggles, having to stay up all night with his child, hence getting more sleep on the road, and so on and so forth. It’s a possible explanation. But there have been many other players who have been able to cope with raising a baby and playing a professional sport.

While the Grass/Turf splits have a small sample size in regards to turf, at least we can see he plays better on grass. Take what you can, right?

Now, the monthly splits. So basically, Varitek was:

• an average hitter with a good eye and subpar power in April…
• a below average hitter with a good eye and decent power in May…
• an above average hitter with an average eye and subpar power in June…
• a lousy hitter with a below average eye and dominating power in July (small sample size, don’t get too excited about the power here).

Huh?

I can’t explain this. I can’t explain why he likes to be on the road, hitting righties in day games on grass with varying spectrums of what kind of player he is dependent on month.

I just know this: Jason Varitek needs to stop hitting in the #6 spot. Enough is enough.

Most of the year, the lineup has been Youkilis, Loretta, Ortiz, Ramirez, Nixon, Varitek, Lowell, Crisp, Gonzalez. I think it’s time to at the very least flip Lowell and Varitek

I really have no clue why these splits are happening, or why Varitek’s having the season he is having. One could easily say that it’s because old age is starting to come through and he’s going to tumble off a precipice, and already is. I’m not sold. I would have been sold if Jorge Posada had continued tumbling down, because he posted a .881 OPS in 2004, .782 in 2005, and is currently at .891 in 2006. Varitek’s last three years (and he’s a year younger) are: .872, .856, .732.

Too steep a drop, especially for someone who has had next to no injury issues and is very fit. There’s something else happening here, and I hope Varitek can turn it around the second-half. Until he does, however, he should be dropped in the order, and his confusing splits sorted out.