Jeff Cirillo: What Happened?

I was playing around on Fangraphs, looking at a variety of individual Mariners’ players stats. One click led to another and the next thing I knew I found myself looking at Jeff Cirillo’s stats. For Mariners fans, this would be depressing to look at, but for sabermertic fans, you would find some interesting things. I found myself stuck in the middle.

Prior to arriving in Seattle, Cirillo was putting up very good numbers. From 1996-2001, Cirillo averaged a WAR of 4.8 per season including a 6.8 WAR in 1998 with the Brewers. Year after year he was amongst the league leaders in average and he was consistently one of the games top fielding third baseman.  In 2001, the Mariners acquired Cirillo via trade from the Rockies and things went downhill. Cirillo completed two seasons with Seattle in which he posted a 1.6 WAR and a -0.4 WAR. Seattle was able to trade Cirillo and his overpriced contract to the Padres where he continued to disappoint.

Well what could have happened to Cirillo? He could have very possibly become a victim of the “Safeco Field Effect”.  While he never posted terrific homerun numbers, he had a good ISO and that took a huge dip once he arrived in Seattle. There were some unfavorable splits in Cirillo’s ISO statistics that did not appear in some of his best seasons.

Cirillo showed promise but he seemed to have hit a wall. While thinking about his stats, it got me thinking back to another third baseman that hit a wall. That third baseman is Eric Chavez. In an article by Dave Gershman over at Beyond the Box Score, he used a WAR graph comparing Chavez to Derek Jeter and it is shocking. 

What happened to Cirillo is very similar to Chavez.

It is always interesting/disappointing to think about what a player could have been. Unfortunately for Mariners fans, Cirillo was one of those players.