Stephen Drew

So, to compensate for the utter dearth of activity on this blog over the past 6 months and the entire baseball season, I will be writing useless, completely subjective narratives about individual Diamondback players and their future with the team. Sound like fun? You bet!

First up is Stephen Drew, who has a strong case for being the most important player of the Josh Byrnes administration. During a period of extreme overhaul (from 2006-2010), Drew has been the one constant, playing almost every game at his familiar position of shortstop while his teammates got traded, benched, called down or cut loose entirely. If I told you to close your eyes and imagine one Arizona Diamondbacks' player in Sedona Red, Stephen Drew would be as good a choice as any. And this all makes him fascinating, especially since the Josh Byrnes administration, having abruptly ended, must now qualify as a failure. Stephen Drew is one of the very few players who was with the organization for the entirety of Josh Byrnes' tenure as GM, making him the on-field face of a failed regime, and it is somewhat appropriate that the team is exploring the possibility of trading him in the offseason. It would be fitting if it happened: for the GM, manager and most-used player to leave the team within six months of each other.

None of this is Stephen Drew's fault, mind you. Looking at the numbers, Drew has been an approximately league-average hitter for his career (OPS+ of 96). People differ on his defense, but stat-heads and traditionalists agree that it has improved to the point that he is, at the very least, not a liability in the field. With the exception of a tough season in 2007, Drew has produced approximately 2 WAR, or the equivalent of an average MLB starter every season in the majors. He is also durable and, by all accounts, a great guy in the clubhouse. Players who fit that description do not grow on trees. The mess that has been the Arizona Diamondbacks the past couple of seasons is not Drew's fault, or, at least, no more than anyone else's.

Yet, to accept Stephen Drew as a league-average player is to ignore the narrative surrounding him. Drew went to notable baseball powerhouse Florida State, where he immediately turned heads, as he was named Baseball America's Freshman of the Year as well as the ACC's Rookie of the Year, according to wikipedia. He was taken by the Diamondbacks with the 15th pick of the 2004 draft, and he only lasted that long due to signability concerns. For an organization that was slowly realizing that the future they had mortgaged in 2001 was coming to collect, Stephen Drew was a link to a brighter future, the gem of a burgeoning farm system. When he reached the major league team in 2006 and hit .316/.357/.517 in 226 plate appearances, it seemed that the Diamondbacks had a young star that they could build a team around. Whenever analysts talked about the Diamondbacks core of young players during that period they could never fail to mention that Stephen Drew was likely to be a star and the face of a franchise that desperately needed to redefine itself.

In the four years since that torrid start however, Drew has hit .266/.328/.439. Again, these are not bad numbers, especially for a shortstop. But they are not star-caliber numbers, not by a long shot. And the language used to describe Stephen Drew has changed as well over the years. Where once he was an called a "can't-miss prospect" and an "exciting young shortstop," he is now widely regarded as a complementary player for an offense built around Justin Upton and Mark Reynolds. If he hits like he did in 2008, that's wonderful, but no one expects that to happen again.

And, from a PR standpoint, Drew's career looks even worse. Stephen is a quiet kid, and I have to assume he is not a natural leader. He also has a reputation for appearing stoic and unemotional while he plays. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with walking quietly back to the dugout rather than smashing your bat after making an out, but on a young team starved for leadership that also had rather tepid managers, Drew's apparent indifference was a public relations nightmare. Far from being a clubhouse leader, Drew became the scapegoat for a team that didn't have enough "fire" to please disgruntled fans. Do not mistake this for my saying that Stephen Drew doesn't care about his team or about baseball. I'm sure that, in his own way, Drew cares as much as anyone else on the diamond. The problem that he faces is that of perception. I have no doubt that Stephen Drew could have become wildly popular on an established, veteran baseball team with strong leadership, but the Arizona Diamondbacks of the late 2000s were clearly not that team.

In many ways, Stephen Drew's tenure with the Diamondbacks is a reflection of Josh Byrnes'. What started with great amounts of promise for each has eventually led to dissatisfaction and disappointment. With the Diamondbacks rebuilding for 2012 or 2013, the consensus is that Drew, who becomes arbitration eligible after the 2011 season, to be traded before that time. If and when that happens, it will act as a final referendum on Byrnes' regime, whose hope that Drew would blossom into a star was one of the many things that led to his firing. As for Drew himself, he is still only 27 and may yet become a great player for whatever team picks him up. But his narrative with the Diamondbacks has already been written: a competent major league player who was expected to be a team leader on and off the field but who, at the end of the day, turned out to be just a shortstop.