Player Profiles: Center Field - Andruw Jones

Player: Andruw Jones

2008 Stats: .158 (33-209), three homeruns, 14 RBIs, 76 Ks

2008 Analysis: When your strikeouts to hits ratio is worse than 2:1, you know you are having a bad year. Jones was miserable. You only need to take a look at the 2008 Stats above to know that.

What is even more troublesome is that a trend is beginning to emerge.

Over the last several years, his average is dropping, his homeruns are dropping, his RBIs are dropping, and his strikeouts are rising. And in 2008, he didn't play in over 150 games for the first time since he came up in 1996.

Yeah, it was a bad year.

On the bright side, his defense was solid as advertised.

2009 Outlook: Andruw Jones has one year left on his contract. Supposedly, he's getting in shape this offseason, but I don't know... I mean, seriously, I have no idea what to do with Andruw.

You can't trade him, he has
a no-trade clause first of all,
and I believe his contract is worth somewhere in the $18 million area this year, which makes his appeal to other teams slim-to-none.

So, what now? We can't go into the season expecting him to be back in form, but we'll never know if he can play unless we put him out there. Ahhhh!

I guess I'm entirely willing to bench him until he shows that he doesn't need to be benched. But, man, is that a lot of money to sit on a bench. One year left, just keep reminding yourself...