Brewers sign Jim Edmonds: Add to glut of LHOF

As Rex pointed out earlier, the Brewers have signed Jim Edmonds to a minor league contract, and yes brings back nightmares from that horrendous 4 game series at Miller Park, most notably his grand slam off of Dave Bush. As I mentioned previously, Doug Melvin has signed several OF to minor league deals this offseason to compete for the 5th OF job, behind Ryan Braun in RF, Carlos Gomez in CF and Corey Hart in RF, with Jody Gerut locked in as the 4th OF. Jim Edmonds fits the mold that Melvin established with his other signings, a left-handed batter. Edmonds had a stellar season for the 2008 Cubs, most especially at the plate compiling a .256/.369/.569 slash line (19 HR and 49 RBIs) in 298 AB almost exclusively against RHP. But, as with all small sample sizes, we must do some further investigation to determine what we should have expected, all things being equal. The first order of business is to qualify that most of his AB were against RHP, inflating his stats. Because Edmonds will not be playing every day, as long as his AB are monitored to only place him in these situations, his production should be fine. Another metric to look at is his BABIP and xBABIP, which were .260 and .315 respectively, means that Edmonds was in fact unlucky in 2008, and should have accumulated approximately 10 extra hits. His offensive game seems fine as long as he is used essentially as a platoon player, which should happen with the aforementioned 3 starting OF in Milwaukee being RH. Now his defensive game is another story, which was an atrocious -23.3 according to UZR/150 and -26 according to Plus/Minus in 2008. UZR needs to be evaluated over multiple seasons to be most effective, but -23.3 is pretty brutal. As it stands now, Edmonds, assuming he makes the big league roster out of spring training, will most likely be the first PH off the bench with some starts against tough RH over Carlos Gomez and even Corey Hart assuming he fails to take a step forward this season.