Why Chris Duncan Deserves a Fair Shake from the Citizens of St. Louis

Man, I love St. Louis. And one of the best things about The Gateway to the West is professional sports. I am a lifetime Cardinals fan (even though I now live in the land of the Reds). But the sad truth is that the public opinion and public comments about St. Louis baseball range from unfounded and unjustified to just flat-out unintelligent and untrue. Especially those directed towards St. Louis Cardinals Left Fielder Chris Duncan. A look at message boards and blogs will often leave me feeling outright embarrassed (as a fan myself) -and not just for Duncan, but also for the city and the other so-called "EDUCATED" sports fans that live in St. Louis.

The first problem I see with today's misguided St. Louis Cardinals fans is that they seem to think that real-life Major League Baseball works like their franchises on MLB 2K9 or their online fantasy baseball leagues (where they often end up "playing ball" with people just as misguided and moronic as they are themselves.) They think, "Oh...well, I can just package Chris Duncan and Rick Ankiel and Joel Piniero together and send them to San Francisco for Tim Lincecum," but this is not how real baseball works. In the real world, the trades are made and the rosters are built by people who actually KNOW and, in most cases, have been involved with baseball their whole lives. It is not as easy as "We should just trade him" or "They need to just trade Chris Duncan for a starting pitcher." You can't just wish upon a star and magically find a trade partner. If the average Duncan-basher can see that he is such a poor player (which is an opinion that I do not agree with, but for the sake of argument, let's say that he is), then obviously the General Managers that are being paid the big bucks and have been given control over entire sports teams can see that too. It is not so easy persuade and deceive a professional in the trade.

So, if there is a player like Duncan who the public mob is after because they think that he is a horrible defender or because he strikes out too often, it is likely that his performance has also been witnessed by his Managers. It is true, then, that if they feel he needs to be traded, they have to follow the proper channels to do so. This would mean that they have to find another Major League team who is interested in acquiring him via trade. Now, it is only logical that the highly paid professionals running the other twenty-nine MLB teams would have used all of the resources available to them to scout and evaluate him. This means that if Duncan is such a terrible Major League player, then they would have absolutely no interest in acquiring him. Therefore, it is only logical that it is not possible to trade Chris Duncan. I would not see a problem with someone saying, "The St. Louis Cardinals need to release Chris Duncan because he is not a good player." I do not agree that Duncan is a bad player, but if someone does, then that statement makes sense. Saying, "Chris Duncan sucks...the Cards need to trade him," absolutely does not make sense.

The second issue that I have with many of the Chris Duncan bashers is when they state that, "Chris Duncan a horrible fielder...he is the worst left fielder in all of baseball ever." While I will admit that Duncan is not an elite level left fielder defensively, he is at the least an average fielder. Ultimate Zone Rating (or UZR) is the accepted method of evaluating a player defensively. To put it simply, Ultimate Zone Rating is the percentage of balls fielded by a player in his particular zone. Duncan's defense is not too great, based on the UZR. But, at best, left fielders are a middling group defensively, and Duncan's UZR is the sixth-best of all left fielders in the National League. Given that there are sixteen National League teams all employing at least one left fielder, Duncan is actually above average by comparison. It should also be taken into account that left field is historically where managers stash their poorer fielders, even in Little League. To reiterate-while Duncan is not Torii Hunter or Jim Edmonds defensively, he is by no means a horrible defensive left fielder, let alone the worst ever.

The third reason that Cardinals fans have caught my ire recently with regards to their criticism of Chris Duncan is their inability or unwillingness to admit that he is a viable home run threat and therefore a valuable weapon as a hitter. They believe that because Duncan strikes out often, he does not deserve to be a Major League player. If that were true, then 90 percent of the players in Major League Baseball would be without jobs. Also, with Duncan, the Cards can live with the strikeouts because he hits home runs and extra-base hits. It is actually pretty typical of a hitter with power to strike out a lot. Teams play and thrive with strike-out prone homerun hitters all the time. In fact, Ryan Howard (the first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies who earned the 2005 National League Rookie of the Year and 2006 National League Most Valuable Player) and Adam Dunn, (considered one of the game's great power hitters) both strike out an amazing number of times. From 2004 through thirty-one games in 2009, Ryan Howard has 2,193 at-bats, 611 hits, 108 doubles, 183 homeruns, 729 strike-outs, and a .270 batting average. As for Dunn's stats, from 2001 through thirty-three games in 2009, he has 3,987 at-bats, 991 hits, 206 doubles, 289 homeruns, 1289 strike-outs, and a .249 average.

And Chris Duncan? From 2005 through thirty-three games in 2009, he has a much smaller sample size and was playing with a spinal injury that required major surgery after the seventy-six games he played in 2008, but his stats average out to be not much worse than Howard's. He has 997 at-bats, 267 hits, 51 doubles, 53 homeruns, 273 strike-outs, and a .268 batting average. Now, to break it down further, Ryan Howard hits a home run once every twelve at-bats or so, and he strikes out about once every three at-bats. Adam Dunn hits a homer once every fourteen at-bats, and he whiffs at the same rate as Howard. Chris Duncan hits a round-tripper once every nineteen at-bats and fails to make contact about every fourth at-bat. Now, if you consider that Duncan played all seventy-six games with a severe spinal injury that could have very well left him unable to walk (let alone swing a bat) in 2008 and remove those stats from the equation, Duncan has 775 at-bats and 46 homeruns. That's a four-bagger every seventeen at-bats.

Now, average out all three players per season average (assuming the each get 600 at-bats, which is about the average, and removing Duncan's injury ruined year of 2008), and Duncan is not too far below these two "elite" power hitters in terms of homerun production. Howard averages out to fifty home runs, Dunn forty-three dingers, and Duncan thirty-eight bombs. Plus, Duncan would have about forty less strike-outs. I am by no means trying to make the case that that Chris Duncan is the same level of baseball player that Ryan Howard is, or even that Adam Dunn is, but Duncan produces homeruns and strikeouts at the same rate as those two, and at a much lower salary. Duncan's annual salary for 2009 is $825,000; Dunn's is $8,000,000; and Howard's $15,000,000. If I were the Cardinals, I would definitely take Duncan at that salary over either of the other two, and I'd consider it a investment well-made. Therefore, to say the Chris Duncan is not a valuable Major League power hitter is just asinine and irresponsible.

My final issue that I have with the way that those Cardinals fans have treated Chris Duncan has to do with the way that certain fans have decided that it is acceptable to insult and abuse Duncan personally. They have taken it upon themselves to report that Chris only has a job as the St. Louis Cardinal's left fielder, and even his spot on the Major League roster, due only to the fact that his father, Dave Duncan, is the teams pitching coach and team manager Tony LaRussa's long-time friend and confidant. This is one of the most dim-witted, brainless, unintelligent, and just utterly false statements that I have ever heard made by so-called baseball "fans."

I can tolerate people insulting the guy's play on the field should they feel that it is sub-par(not that I have a choice on the matter, as everyone has an opinion), but that kind of slander is just hitting below the belt. People should be ashamed of themselves for saying something like that. Not only is it an insult to both Duncans, but is just an absolutely stupid thing to suggest that LaRussa would even consider playing someone if they don't deserve to play. It would behoove these idiots who say those types of things to remember that Tony LaRussa is the third winningest manager in Major League Baseball history. He has won 2,481 games so far in his managerial career, including twelve divisional pennants, three American League pennants, and two National League pennants.

He has won Manager of the Year honors five times. He has managed teams to five World Series, winning two, and is only the second manager ever to win a World Series title in both the American League and National League. How is it even remotely possible that he has accomplished all of this by playing favorites? If anything, LaRussa lacks patience when it comes to players who don't play hard and who under-perform. If LaRussa was guilty of being nepotistic, why did Cody McKay not stick with the Cardinals? Cody McKay was the son of the St. Louis first base coach Dave McKay. He was given thirty-five games and couldn't cut it, so he was sent to the Minor Leagues and never heard from again. If LaRussa and Duncan played favorites, they wouldn't have lasted a few weeks in the Major Leagues, let alone thirty-something years in the MLB. So it makes no sense to make a claim that Tony LaRussa, who only cares about winning and after losing one game in a 162-game season is in such a sour mood that he apparently scares news reporters, would make managerial decisions based on who is related to who. Chris Duncan goes out there and plays hard and produces, and he deserves a spot on the Cardinals Major League roster. His playing time has nothing to do with who his father is.

To summarize, it simply makes no sense to demand, "Just trade Chris Duncan because he sucks." If you want to say, "Chris Duncan sucks, release him," that at least makes sense because you cannot trade a bad player. Chris Duncan is not "the worst defensive player in baseball," and when compared to other Major League left fielders, he is very slightly above average. "Chris Duncan cannot hit" is a completely false claim, for while you can say he strikes out a lot, he still strikes out less than Adam Dunn and Ryan Howard, and he hits close to the same amount of homeruns per at bat. Plus he makes about 5 percent of what Ryan Howard makes.

I don't think there is a fan out there (including myself) who wouldn't love Howard on their team, but since we can't have him, I'll take Chris Duncan for $14,000,000 less. Most importantly, if you want to insult the player, that is tolerable, but don't insult the man. As paying customers, the fans have the right to make what he does on the field their business, but not who he is as a man. Stick to insulting the game play if you must, but the criticisms should cease within the ball diamond. Duncan plays hard and deserves to be treated better. If they are going to exist at all (which they will), insults directed at him (and to any athlete) should be intelligently and maturely limited to his play on the field, not his personal life.

We are not New York Yankees or Mets or Philadelphia Phillies fans-we are St. Louis Cardinal Fans. We have been hailed as "the greatest fans in all of sports," and rightly so. We are the reason that players such as Larry Walker allowed the Colorado Rockies to trade him to the Cards (after spending his entire career with the Rockies) despite the no-trade clause in his contract. We are the reason that elite players such as Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Chris Carpenter, and many others have signed contracts to keep wearing the birds on the bat, despite the opportunity to make much more money elsewhere. We are the reason that whenever a big-name player wants to be traded and is asked who he wants to be traded to, the Cardinals are always at the top of the list. We are the reason that almost every ball player that has ever played for the Red Birds, when asked where he loved to play, mentions St. Louis every time. We are the reason that players such as Jim Edmonds and Ozzie Smith (the former who played in cities other than St. Louis before and after joining the Cardinals and the latter who played in San Diego before becoming a star and hall-of-famer in St. Louis) still have restaurants and still spend much of their time in the STL. So, remember, St. Louis...we are not Yankee fans, or Phillie fans, or any other fan. We are St. Louis Cardinals fans, and we are better than any other fan.