Omar Viquel played all of 2009 with Texas getting into 62 games. In 177 at bats he had 14 rbis and hit .266. Playing 2B, 3B and SS, Omar had 0 errors in 207 chances.
Omar is second on the All-Time shortstop list with 11 Gold Gloves. Only Ozzie Smith, aka The Wizard, won more with 13. Omar won 9 Gold Gloves with Cleveland and 2 with the Giants. The closest active shortstop is Derek Jeter with 4 Gold Gloves so Omar's position behind Ozzie is safe for now. Omar signed a one year deal with the White Sox in the off-season.
Andruw Jones played the entire 2009 season with Texas. I had hopes that he would regain the form he had in Atlanta. He's not even 33 yet so there is still time for him, but it won't be in Texas. Omar played in 82 games, getting 281 at bats and hitting 17 homeruns with 43 rbis. He only hit .214 though. He had 0 errors in 63 chances while playing 1B, LF and RF. He only played the field in 25 games, getting the call at DH the other 57 games.
Andruw is third on the All-Time list for National League Gold Gloves with 10. Only Roberto Clemente (12) and Willie Mays (12) are ahead of him. That is pretty nice company he's hanging out with at the top of the list. Andruw, like Omar, signed a one year deal with the White Sox.
While the Gold Glove ability these three diplayed earlier in their careers wasn't really a factor for the 2009 Rangers, that is still a pretty impressive group of veterans to have talking to your young players. I just hope they had some help moving all that hardware to their new teams.
thats 34 more than the Rays had (on the bench).
ReplyDeleteNice post. I like these kind of observations.
ReplyDeleteOn a different tangent, Irod and Omar have always been easy to like, but Andruw Jones is a player that I had an outward dislike towards in his prime. I always found him visibly lazy. He seemed like a person that took everything for granted and I noted it numerous times through the years.
A strange thing happened, when he suddenly lost his abilities, instead of feeling like "I told you so!" (which I'm not above doing), I felt sorry for him. If there was a lock for the HOF at at 27 he was the guy.
But the reason I felt sorry for him is because he finally seemed to have a desperate desire to just play baseball. It almost appeared as if he realized how wonderful his professional life was..even if it came after a Dale Murphy type nosedive.