Mariners Release Richie Sexson

by Charlie Wilmoth on Jul 10, 2008 4:30 PM EDT

The Mariners have released first baseman Richie Sexson and will presumably eat the rest of the $14 million they owe him this year.

Sexson isn't terribly old, but like a lot of first basemen, his decline has been steep. Most of his value in his career has come from power and walks, and he's never posted high batting averages, so it looks like a slight decline in his bat speed, or his reaction time, or something, has brought him down. The Mariners might have seen that coming--first basemen who don't hit for great averages don't generally age gracefully--but they just wouldn't be the Mariners if they noticed things like that. At least they got a very good 2005 season out of the deal.

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I wonder how this portends for our own Adam LaRoche?

“first basemen who don’t hit for great averages don’t generally age gracefully” sure sounds like LaRoche, for at least 2 months out of the year, anyway.

I guess it’s a good thing that LaRoche and Sexson do not show up in each others’ comparables on their Baseball Reference pages….

by gonfalon on Jul 10, 2008 6:42 PM EDT reply actions

Baseball-reference similarity scores aren't very good

Mainly because there’s no correction for era at all, and they only thing it really looks at is career totals, not really how similar of a style players are.

Baseball-Prospectus lists these twenty as having seasons the most similar to LaRoche (each player is listed for a single season…BP currently has the dates showing incorrectly although it’s only a cosmetic issue):
Paul Sorrento
Greg Walker
J.T. Snow
Tino Martinez
Joe Hague
Harry Anderson
Robert Fick
Jason Giambi
Pete O’Brien
Pete Ward
Rico Brogna
Mike Lum
Brian Daubach
Don Mincher
Mike Pagliarulo
Lee Thomas
Willie Upshaw
Dick Sisler
Jay Gibbons
Dan Driessen