The absolute stupudity that comes out of Ken “Hawk” Harrelson’s mouth shouldn’t surprise me. Afterall I don’t think he’s had a coherent baseball thought this century. But there he was Thursday night, at it again.
Here is the guy that denounced sabermetrics in favor of TWTW, The Will To Win. He sees baseball through his 1940’s colored glasses, which magically puts the Chicago White Sox atop the standings every time he opens the paper. He and owner Jerry Reinsdorf sit and watch White Sox baseball with drool running down their chin at the clubs potential year-after-year, while blaming umpires for each and every loss.
Last night, in a horrible attempt to talk up one of said players, Hawk had the audacity to pronounce Todd Frazier was a better defender than Chicago Cubs third baseman, Kris Bryant.
The best part is Hawk shutting down Steve Stone about 30 seconds in. pic.twitter.com/xzPMGRhscO
— Lauren Comitor (@laurencomitor) September 2, 2016
Now you can have your preferences, sure, but this is actually something you can actually measure. Even Steve Stone, who has grown to hate the Cubs in recent years, seems uncomfortable with Hawk’s analysis.
A quick look at Fangraphs however will tell a completely different story.
Frazier – -1 DRS, .678 RZR, -9.0 RngR, -4.7 UZR, -5.6 UZR / 150, .975 Fld%
Bryant – 0 DRS, .752 RZR, 4.5 RngR, 3.2 UZR, 6.3 UZR / 150, .947 Fld%
The only area Todd rates better than Bryant is fielding percentage, which is dispelled because Bryant more effortlessly reaches more batted balls than Fraizer does. There isn’t a single area outside of that which allows you to think Hawk was right.
Hawk, you could “put it on the board” as “he gone” and no matter how much you “stretch” your imagination, your ability to provide good baseball conversation is… “O-Vah!”
