Friday, September 10, 2010

Austin Jackson's Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, cycles and no-hitters are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

Austin Jackson is having a much better season than most people expected out of him and he's probably your 2010 AL Rookie of the Year. While his strikeout (149) to walk (43) ratio is fantastic for all the wrong reasons, this is actually Jackson's first Golden Sombrero of the season. The Yankees fliped the young outfielder to the Tigers for Curtis Granderson's inability to hit lefties and the Tigers are winning the trade this year. Jackson is hitting .303/.359/.411 while being dirt cheap and UZR seems to think he at least plays a capable center field. His production should tumble some next season as his .415 BABIP isn't sustainable. Granderson, meanwhile, couldn't hit your mom if you could get her off the couch and teach her to throw lefty.

But on Thursday, Jackson didn't have much to offer at the plate going 0-4 with a walk and four strikeouts. So before we all go patting the Tigers on the back, let's take a look at how the rookie padded his strikeout totals...

Bottom 2nd: Jackson struck out swinging against Gavin Floyd. He did draw a lead-off walk in the 1st inning so I'm willing to cut him a little slack on this one.

Bottom 4th: Jackson struck out swinging against Floyd. He saw 5 pitches and they were all strikes. He used all of his patience on that 1st inning walk.

Bottom 6th: Jackson struck out looking against Gavin. I stand corrected. He took 3 balls before watching strike 3.

Bottom 8th: Jackson struck out swinging against Sergio Santos.

In comparison, Granderson: DNP.

No comments:

Post a Comment