Nomaaaaaah vs. Juan Pierre: Fight!

As several of you know, I've been dogging Juan Pierre ever since the Dodgers signed him during the offseason to an expensive, multi-year contract. There's basically only one thing wrong with him: he sucks.

In 2004 and earlier, Juan Pierre actually did what he was supposed to do: get on base. However, he hasn't done that for years, even though he is paid the salary that someone who does that might command. Oh, and he plays a lousy center field. Sometimes he'll outrun his mistakes and otherwise he won't. Basically, Pierre is a waste of money and batting him in the #2 spot in the batting order is just retarded.

The situation with Nomar Garciaparra is a somewhat different one. For one thing, he had a very good year for us last year. Unfortunately, this year he seems to have forgotten how to hit anything besides the occasional single. Also, as the Dodger stadium statistics screen made sure we were aware on Monday night, Nomar has a fantastic batting average when runners are in scoring position. But Nomar is supposed to be a power hitter and he has just 14 (count 'em!) extra base hits this season (12 doubles and 2 homers). Do you know how many Juan Pierre has this year? 17 (13 doubles and 4 triples)! As I write this, Pierre also has a better OPS than Nomar. Nomar started the year playing first base but has since moved to third base to make room for James Loney, who already has 9 extra base hits in a small fraction of the plate appearances that Nomar has.

So, the question I've been asking all year is 'What happened?' Nomar's power has just disappeared overnight, which suggests to me that there is an injury that has not been made public. He's hitting like a #8-hitting shortstop rather than what he's done in the past. Something is wrong.