Player Spotlight: Jermaine Dye

Jermaine Dye played for the White Sox for 5 seasons, totaling 8.5 bWAR. For the most part, he was good offensively, but his WAR total is dragged down by some pretty bad defense, less than great baserunning and hitting into a lot of double plays.

Offensively, Dye totaled a .278/.344/.525 line, which comes out to a 121 OPS+. He averaged 33 HR and 92 RBI per season. All very good numbers. He was especially good during his All-Star and Silver Slugger winning 2006 season, where he finished 5th in MVP voting. That year he hit .315/.385/.622 with 44 HR and 120 RBI.

On the defensive side, he was roughly an average fielder when he came to the Sox. But things went downhill pretty quickly from there. His season RField totals went like this: 0, -8, -27, -10, -11. Even setting aside the absolutely atrocious -27 in 2007, he was costing his team roughly 1 win a year with his poor defense. Overall, he cost the Sox 56 runs on defense, or about 5.5 wins.

Once you factor in the -56 runs on defense, -8 runs because of double plays, and another -9 runs due to baserunning, he loses a total of 73 runs. With his bat he gained 76 runs. The good and the bad almost exactly cancel each other out, which results in a total of 9 WAR in his 5 seasons with the Sox. An average player is worth about 2 WAR per season. Which means Jermaine Dye was basically a league average player during his time on the South Side.

On a more personal note, I never really cared for Dye. I met him a few times, and he seemed to have absolutely no personality. One year at Soxfest, I camped out to be first in his autograph line one day. When he arrived, I said good morning, and asked very politely if he could inscribe “2005 WS MVP” on my jersey. He literally never looked up at me. He just shook his head no, scribbled his JDy signature, and pushed my jersey back to me. Other interactions at other events went basically the same way. And these were paid events, where you expect players to treat you a little bit better.

In any case, Dye was a major part of the 2005 World Series team, and had 5 solid seasons with the Sox. So I’ve been collecting him quite a bit, even though I don’t particularly like him. I’ve amassed quite a few items. About half of these were obtained in person. The others were through signings and consignments.

Totals:
Cards: 29
Baseballs: 2
8x10s: 5
16x20s: 3
Mini Helmet: 1
Jersey: 1
Bats: 2
Total: 43