The Lesson Of Nomar
- Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:26 AM
- Written By: Andrew Simon
My last post about Eric Chavez was an apt lead-in to yesterday's news that Nomar Garciaparra was retiring. As Rob Neyer phrased it, Nomar's career was "an excellent object lesson in the non-inevitability of immortality."
Garciaparra was on his way to becoming an absolute, no-doubt Hall of Famer until the injuries started chipping away at him.
It's amazing to look back now on the 2000 season. That year was Nomaaaaaaaah's best, as he hit .372/.434/.599, won the AL batting title and punched up a career-high 155 OPS+.
It's funny though -- immortality is certainly not inevitable, but even if Nomar isn't a Hall of Famer, he's a guy people will remember for a long time. If you look at other guys who had great seasons in 2000 (just 10 years ago!) it's stunning how quickly players of a somewhat lower quality become completely irrelevant.
For example, who were the top 10 in batting average in the majors in 2000? Nomar was one, and Todd Helton, Manny Ramirez, Vladimir Guerrero, Carlos Delgado and Derek Jeter appear on the list too.
The rest of that list inspired me to scratch my head and go, "THAT guy?"
In 2000, it's difficult to remember, Darin Erstad and Moises Alou hit .355, Jeffrey Hammonds hit .335 and David Segui hit .334, all finishing in the top 10. This same year, Richard Hidalgo finished fifth in home runs, and the top 10 in ERA included Jeff D'Amico, Chan Ho Park and Rick Ankiel.
The fact is, nothing is inevitable in baseball. If you look at last year's leaders, you can confidently predict that Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer will go down as two of the greatest players of all time, Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera will eventually cruise into the Hall and Joey Votto and Pablo Sandoval have years of All-Star games and MVP votes ahead of them.
But reality is a lot messier than that. Chances are, injuries will sap somebody's potential before it fully blooms, and someone else's career will fizzle out just as quickly as it erupted in the first place.
We'll just have to stay tuned to find out who.
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