Top three disappointments
1. OF B.J. Upton: Tremendous talent shows at times — but not enough of the time. And he has fewer homers (six) than Gabe Gross.
Okay, now there are a ton of ways you can go with "disappointments" on this team of the player variety, and the other two listed are Rocco Baldelli and Jonny Gomes, but Upton is the choice, really? How about Jason Bartlett's lack of offense despite being a glove angel, or Carlos Pena -- although he's been really good since late May -- or hey, there's that one guy who plays left field that is woefully under performing to his own career averages, how about him?
But the pick is B.J. Upton and the reasoning is his great talent that hasn't shown "enough of the time" and hitting fewer homeruns than Gabe Gross. Okay, okay. Here's the problem with that...he's third on the team in EqA behind only Evan Longoria and Eric Hinske, and he's 51st overall behind a guy named Rick Ankiel and ahead of some guys named Prince Fielder and Miguel Cabrera. Let's go through the rest of the problems; his OPS+ is 116, which means he's above average, and while his power outage is something to be mildly concerned about why is there no credit given to his improved walk rate (up from 12.1 to 15.8%) and strikeout rate (down from 32.5 to 24.2)?
How about defensively, this is Upton's first real year in center and maybe he's costing the team some runs, right? Well his Runs Above Average is at 6, solid, and he's third overall for plays made out of zone behind Carlos Beltran and Carlos Gomez. Oh and he has 15 win shares, the same amount as that Longoria guy who the paper named team MVP.
So wait, he's a disappointment for improving nearly every aspect of his game minus power?