Just a word about my methodology when choosing candidates in the Players of the Decade series ... I begin by sorting players according to Wins Above Replacement, over the last season or two or three. Next, I mentally eliminate the older players, looking particularly for players who will spend much of this decade in their middle and late 20s.
How Good Is Rockies’ Carlos Gonzalez?
The problem is that I sometimes miss players because when I sort by position, I'm looking backward instead of forward. Which is how I missed Carlos Gonzalez when running through the the right fielders. After the jump, what I missed ...
Last season, Gonzalez played roughly 460 innings in left field and 460 in center field, but only 300 in right field. I didn't consider him for Left Fielder of the Decade or Center Fielder of the Decade, though, because the Rockies seem to have him penciled in for right field this season ... and so of course I forgot all of this when choosing a Right Fielder of the Decade.
Ultimately, I decided on Jason Heyward, and after Heyward I would probably have ranked them 2. Justin Upton, 3. Jay Bruce, 4. Shin-Soo Choo, with maybe Domonic Brown breaking in there somewhere.
And Gonzalez? Well, the problem is that he’s roughly the same age as Bruce -- 25 this season -- but he’s got just one season in the majors with more than 317 plate appearances. Yes, he was really really really good in that one season, better than Bruce or Upton have ever been. And I’m willing to cut a guy some slack for having huge Coors/road splits, as CarGo did. I just want to see him play brilliantly for more than one season before assuming he’s going to be a big star for the next nine seasons.
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