Is Gabe Gross Overrated?

I don’t think we can evaluate Gross the same way we do a starting player. He was acquired to play a specific role: late inning defensive replacement, occasional platoon starter, outfield reserve. For that role he is very well suited. In that sense he is a superior player.

If he is a regular, he is not a good player, but that is not what he is intended to be. No team has 25 outstanding players. What makes the Rays better than most is that we have players like Gross to fill in when needed. Comparing Gross to Upton for example is like comparing Iwamura to Pena or Shields to Longoria. They have entirely different functions, and each performs his very well.

Even should the Rays acquire an outstanding right fielder, they would likely keep Gross because of the need for a 4th outfielder. Think about it this way. Suppose a team had Sizemore, Granderson, Quentin, Dye and Gross (and had an outstanding DH and starter at 1B as well). Which of the 5 would go? My guess is it would not be Gross, although he is clearly far below the other 4. But you cannot play all 4, and that is a waste of resources. Better to trade one of them for something else you could use and keep Gross to fill the 4th outfielder position.

He is solid against righties and sucks vs lefties. He also plays very acceptable defense. That is what he has always been and that is what he has been this year. IMO he is playing entirely too much against lefties.

This is the problem with looking at the overall numbers with Gross. If you look at his numbers vs righties you would think that he should be playing every single day at a very good level. If you just look at his numbers vs lefties then you would think he would have trouble cracking your beer league softball team’s line-up. If you look at his combined numbers you fail to see his strengths and weaknesses.

The conclusion is everyone needs to look at Gross through intelligent baseball eyes. He SHOULD finish with very good numbers (esp ratios) since he SHOULD only play against righties. However, everyone needs to realize that if he played against lefties that his numbers would drop like a rock.

kept Haynes and never traded for Gross…

but we really do have to be careful about sample size when looking at splits too. Although still very poor, his numbers against lefties this year are considerably better than his career numbers. While I think it likely that he will always have a severe platoon split, if you look at his home/away splits and first half/second half splits, they are also exceptionally wide. While platoon splits may reflect cause and effect, those seem more arbitrary to me, so what conclusions can we draw? Perhaps simply that he hasn’t had enough time to demonstrate that he can hit lefties adequately.

In any case, the issue remains to consider his performance relative to his assigned role, not against some general standard for corner outfielders. If he is doing the job assigned to him, he cannot be overrated because some of his numbers look poor. Those who think he should be a regular are overrating him, much as many Rays’ fans overrated Wigginton. As a reserve/semi-regular, Wigginton was exceptionally valuable. As a regular, he was below average.

 If Gross could hit .280/.360/.460 as a regular, he would be one and likely would not have been available to the Rays. Good teams need players like Gross to stay in contention over 162 games. Ergo, he is valuable.

and that is due to injuries, which is exactly one reason he is on the team. I would like to get a better right fielder also, better than Hinske/Baldelli/Ruggiano/Gomes or whatever combination we were using. But I don’t think that has anything to do with Gross. Of course, if Baldelli is healthy and back on track, there is probably no need to focus on that too much.