Juan Pierre's surprisingly solid season

If the White Sox continue their implosion and fall well out of the AL Central race, there are more than a few guys who can't be blamed.

Surprisingly, Juan Pierre is one of them.

I say "surprisingly" because, before the season started, just about everyone was on Pierre's case. The White Sox got "someone who isn't very good at major league baseball." He won't be a full win above replacement. Pierre "won't be doing much for the Sox at the plate in the next two years." You get the idea. We all thought Juan Pierre was going to suck in 2010.

He hasn't.

Well, he kind of hasn't. His .308 wOBA is pretty awful, but I'm going to deviate from the sabermetric agenda for a minute here.

Pierre leads off. The first and most important thing a leadoff hitter can do is get on base. All other skill sets are secondary, whether that's speed or power.

As of Monday, .327 is the MLB average on-base percentage. Pierre's is .341, and that's been rising ever since a dismal April.

Pierre hit .194/.260/.194 for the month of April with a .202 BABIP. Naturally, that first month colored a lot of fans' impressions of him as being negative.

But Pierre started to show signs of life in May and June. Over those two months, Pierre posted a .340 OBP with an acceptable 20 steals in 25 tries.

And, when July rolled around, Pierre really took off. From July 2 through right now, Pierre has hit .304/.385/.366, good for a .751 OPS with a fairly normal .320 BABIP.

Circle that .385 OBP, though. Pierre has been getting on base at a well above-average clip lately.

If you're going to blame the inconsistency of the White Sox offense for the team's struggles, don't include Pierre in that discussion.

Oh, and to top off this Juan Pierre praise post, he's played above-average defense in left field. Both UZR and DRS don't rate his arm well (obviously), but his range has led both metrics to rate him as above average (+2 DRS, 9 UZR).

So there. Somebody who heavily uses sabermetrics just wrote something nice about Juan Pierre, the usual sabermetric whipping boy. Does this mean Cy Young voters can stop looking at win totals, now?

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Links:

• Jim—at his newly re-designed site—talks JJ Putz's struggles, which of course have come after I wrote a glowing article about his success this year.
• Erik—at his newly re-designed site (all the cool kids are doing it!)—says it might be time to start praying to a higher power if you want the Sox to make the playoffs.
• Cheat revisits Sunday's loss and a painful homestand.
• Check out Adam and Jeff's latest podcast over at Oral Sox. I had the chance to BS with them for about 45 minutes prior to Sunday's game, which was a lot of fun.
• I also had the chance to meet Jim (of Sox Machine fame) and Skot (of reader-of-my-site fame) at the game Sunday. We hung out during the sixth inning, which was the same inning the Sox stormed to a 7-5 lead. We all went back to our respective sections after the sixth, and the Sox blew the game. Jinx (but it was a pleasure meeting both of them, too).