Ibanez, Raul

Raul Ibanez signed with the Phillies prior to the 2009 season and instantly became this reviewers favorite pick. He moved from a terrible hitter's park into Citizen's park and from an iffy line-up to one of the Cadillac offenses of the NL. He was a bit old to be sure, but he had been such a consistent performer (more of this in a moment) that he seemed like a terrific power value for the price he was fetching. Ibanez got off to an MVP start with 17 home runs 40 runs and 46 RBI in the first two months and then faded... sort of. Here are his splits:

.295 15-6-13...
.396 22-7-31...
.291-16-5-20...
.218-8-2-14...
.233-13-1-16...
.314-11-2-16...

The wise observer will see that I have taken his 2008 splits for the Mariners and rearranged the order to mimic his 2009 splits. His lowest totals for any month except his lost August (injury) were 11-4-13 which is the kind of month that you'll find in almost any collection of split stats for a 100 RBI guy. And after that August, and most people had dropped Ibanez despite there not being a single interior number supporting it, Ibanez came back and went .250-20-7-14 for the final month. Further, his LD/GB/FB rates remained constant INCLUDING his bad August. The main change in August was that 4% of his fly balls went for home runs, whereas he topped 20% each and every other month.

The old saw here is true: that if Ibanez' problems had happened in May or June instead of at the trade deadline heading into the pennant race, wouldn't we have just said that these kinds of things happen to 37 year olds?

Now, Ibanez is 38 in June, his batting average after his hot start was in the .250's, and his strikeout rate went up a significant amount (23.8% vs. 2008's 17.3% and career 17.1%), so at the very best he'll be a three-category guy instead of a three and a half. But he's likely to keep Raul-ing along. .270-80-28-98-3 in 550 AB