Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Kielty's Krew ?

There's been a lot of discussion over at the official A's messageboard regarding Bobby Kielty. There were a lot high hopes for Mr. Kielty this season, but his performance was less then satisfactory to say the least. Granted, he saw limited at bats, but he still had more than enough playing time to show us what he was capable of. Unfortunately, he never seemed to get it in gear and ended the season with a pretty dismal stat line :

BA 0.214 / OBP 0.321 / SLG 0.370 / OPS 0.691 / HR 7 / RBI 31 / 35 BB / 47 SO

The only silver lining is his OBP and BB rate, his OBP was a full point + over his BA and his BB rate was quite good.

Currently the discussion is on whether he will be around next season or not. Personally, I would like to see someone else in the OF instead of Kielty with some better production. However, knowing the A's budget and Billy Beane's sometimes stubborn loyalty to certain players, I have a gut feeling that Kielty will still be around. Will that be a good thing or a bad thing ? Well, that all depends on Kielty.

Personally, I think he just had a really bad year, a fluke of a year. If you take away his 2001 and 2004 stats - what I consider his worst seasons - and base his 2005 season on the stats that remain, his 2005 would look something like this :

BA 0.263 / OBP 0.376 / SLG 0.433 / OPS 0.809 / HR 15-18 / RBI 60-70

That's based on a total of 503 at bats for the 2005 season based on his career numbers minus 2001 and 2004. If this is the Kielty we can count on for next season, then I have no problem hanging on to Kielty. But that is a big IF and the A's need to decide if Kielty is a risk worth taking.

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