Overcrowding in the Outfield
Christopher James - March 31, 2005

Time to make a choice Mr. GM.

Wells. Johnson. Rios. Catalanotto. Gross. Five Outfielders for three positions, and full time DH already on duty.

What do you do? Here are your options as I see them…

  1. - Platoon Rios and Gross in RF and Cat and Johnson in LF.
  2. - Platoon Cat and Johnson in LF and use Gross as a fill-in in the OF and DH.
  3. - Start an Outfield of Gross, Rios, and Wells, use Cat as a 4th OF and spot Johnson at DH and OF.
  4. - Demote Gross.

OK.

To start with, after the spring he’s had, I feel Gross deserves a look. We know Johnson’s ceiling, we know Cat’s ceiling, neither is spectacular. Gross could produce big-time. Could. So I would nix option 4.

Platooning. Not a huge fan of platooning young players. Rios is as ready as he’s going to be. He is gold in the field and if he has filled out 10 pounds, as is being reported, he may be closer to being a full-sized man this year. I think Rios has to be given the ball to run with. If you start platooning him before he has had a chance to fail, you undermine his confidence and sabotage his season. He is your RF. No platoon. Nix option 1.

That leaves us with two options. Go with the Cat/Johnson platoon that we all expected going into Spring Training, and use Gross as an occasional fill-in, or start Gross and let the other three get spot starts around the outfield, etc.

Let's look at our parts. Johnson is an ideal 4th outfielder. He has started (pretty much) the last two years, but probably shouldn’t have. He has a great arm, a chippy little bat, and will be a great late inning defensive replacement and occasional LF/RFer. Catalanotto has a good bat, and may still have a little speed left in his legs. I firmly believe he can pull off a .317/13/70 season, if he stays healthy. Huge If. I would start him in LF once a week or so, DH once a week, and fill in on occasion in RF. I like Cat a lot, and if Gross or Rios are hitting .212 after 2 months, he plays full-time, no question, but as I said earlier, we know what Cat and Johnson can do. Gross, on the other hand, could very well surprise us with a .280/30/90 kind of season, and with a Delgado-less power-starved offence this season, he’s definitely worth a look.

In a rebuilding year, the Jays can afford to take a chance on option #3.