Brook Jacoby got selected for today for a number of reasons. First, he's one of those people who has a name that you will never, ever, ever hear again. There are, apparently, 9,948 Jacobys in the the United States. That means, you're as likely to meet a Jacoby as your are a Clemens, Gruber (theme...), McNulty (or, McNutty, depending on the parlance) or Woodcock (lol). He also has a girls name, but it's misspelled (Brooke, right?). I guess it could be Brooks, as in Brooks Bataglia (dammit), but not just plain "Brook".
Second, he's so damn dated. No way major leaguers wear those cheap-ass stirrups-painted-on-to-your-sock-things, that don't go down far enough, so that you can actually see the white of the rest of the sock. Sucked the soul right out of the concept of the stirrup. Everything about him is dated. I was able to find his 1990 Donruss card. The design of the card is awesome, specifically the red border that features black paint-splatter dots on either side of the picture. However, the picture itself is lame and unexciting. His cheesy-ass '80s-era uniform and flip-down sunglasses are framed by the stale blue background of the old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland. He also looks like the guy you'd have playing third on your work softball team. About 5-9, 170 (he was actually 5-11, 195). Decent arm, decent glove, can't really hit. Guess that kinda sums up his career, though.
However, most importantly (to me at least) are his stats. Those stats are, to say the least, unusual. Specifically his career year, 1987. Now, Brook Jacoby did play for the Cleveland Indians. These Indians went 61-101, finishing last in the league in attendance (averaging about 12,500/per game). But when you look at their lineup, you're left wondering what was missing. This was a starting lineup that featured Jacoby (who went .300-32-69, and we will talk about the 69 later), a young Joe Carter (.264-32-106), Julio Franco (.319-8-52), Mel Hall (.280-18-76), Brett Butler (.295-9-41), Cory Snyder (.236-33-82) and Pat Tabler (.307-11-86). Carter ultimately made a name for himself by hitting the game-winning homer against Wild Thing (the other/real one) in Game 6 of the '93 Series. Julio Franco was a solid #2 hitter for most of the '80's, and I believe owns a batting title from, say, 1991. Brett Butler is widely considered one of the better leadoff men of the past 30 years, owning a career .290 average. Mel Hall went on to be the power on some pretty mediocre late '80s-early '90s Yankees teams, but was not a bad player. Snyder and Tabler, like Jacoby, were mediocre players at best, but as you can see, had serviceable numbers. This was a team that had 3 30-homer guys, 5 guys hit over .280, and have 3 30-steal guys. One would think this would lead to runs.
Cleveland scored 742 runs that year. 12th in the AL.
I don't know why this happened, except to think that the entire team had A-Rod syndrome. Jacoby, especially, had 62 extra-base hits, and 69 RBIs. Ultimately, though, I found it in an obscure little stat - Jacoby came to the plate 27 times with runners on 3rd and less than 2 outs. Only 7 times out of those 27 was he able to advance the runner in. Similarly, of the 344 runners on base during Jacoby at-bats, only 41 of them came in to score. This left him with percetages of 27% and 12%.
By comparison, much stronger hitters will have percetages of roughly 50-60% for runners on 3d with less than 2 outs, and 20% for all runners scored.
Put in perspective, that would have meant another 30+ RBIs for Jacoby, or the 100 RBI season we're used to seeing.
Also, one last thing. Apparently, he's best friends with post-cokehead Dave Parker. The like to fish together. Go on a trip to Wisconsin every year.
The Good: Unique name; dated style; named one of the 100 greatest Cleveland Indians of all-time.
The Bad: Little anxious with runners on base; ... Wow, not much down-side to this one.
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