Great stuff all around on Marte...from LL to Balthazar to Rain to Moe.
But I'd like to move the comparison machine way back past Fernandez and Stennett to the hero shortstop of my youth...Luis Aparicio.
On the surface, Marte (and few others) couuld ever match Little Louie in most areas:
- A defensive wizard--his top BRef comp is Ozzzie Smith. Career 34.6 WAR in defense alone. Off the charts on all metrics. Nine gold gloves.
- The most feared base runner of his era. Nine straight stolen base titles.
- The definition of 'eye'. In more than 11 thouand plate appearances, he struck out exactly SIX more times than he walked.
- Thirteen different all star games...and an MVP award.
So how can Marte--or anyone else--be compared to him? Well, the guy wasn't perfect:
- Despite the eye, his career OBP was only 311 (compared to league-average 329). He neither struck out NOR walked very much.
- Career OPS+ was only 82...and exceeded 100 only once in 19 seasons.
Yes, Marte could exceed both of these last metrics. Last year's performance was fueled by a high BABIP. But neither contact nor hard contact indicated this was a total fluke.
But still, how do these two guys EVER compare?
The answer lies in the highly discredited 'eye test'. What Aparicio did was unnerve opponents. If the current play against the M's is to keep from facing Cruz in key spots, for the White Sox of that era it was to keep Aparicio off the bases at all costs. Because what he brought to that team (an AL team that went to the World Series instead of the Mantle/Berra/Skowron/Richardson/Kubek/Ford Yankees in 1959) was energy. Confidence. Spirit. All the things that WAR can't figure out how to measure.
Could Marte be that igniter for the M's? Well, it depends. Depends on what Dipoto and Servais tell him--when they explain to him what kind of player they want him to be. It's impossible to know what Al Lozez said to Aparicio. And we'll probably never know what's said to Marte--although JD seems pretty open to this point
But Lopez seems certain to have told Louie some version of 'just be you. Have fun.' Aparicio's stolen base percentage of 79% didn't set a record. Unlikely that anyone chastised him when he got back to the dugout when he was gunned down. And my guess is this is just the same instruction Marte had from Lloyd.
Will the new crew try to form-fit him? Will his inevitable sophomore slumps then be asociated (by him) with trying to be something different?
No way to tell at this point. But when you've got a fuse that's capable of igniting a team...don't play safe and pour water on it.