This is the collage piece of things I’ve written about Xavier Nady over the years. Welcome Mets fans and anyone else wondering who the heck Nady is.

Looking for other people’s reactions? You want this entry. Looking for my commentary? Hang on, I haven’t written it yet. Okay, now I have.

At his peak, Nady should develop into a .280+ hitter with 30-35 homer power. If he remains at second, Nady could be a Jeff Kent-type run producer. If he moves to first base or left field, he’ll still be a darned good offensive player but probably not in the elite ranks that he could join at a more offense-deficient position. Regardless, Nady has the potential to be a solid big-league regular for years to come, with a few All-Star Game appearances a good possibility. (11 Aug 2001))

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at a Padre message board I recently discovered (in the sense that Columbus “discovered” America) about Nady’s upside. The names being thrown out for comparison are Pat Burrell, Paul Konerko, and Dean Palmer. These all seem like reasonable comps to me. Konerko is probably the one that Nady reminds me most of from an approach standpoint.

The potential downside of Nady? I was leafing through some old Sickels books the other night and discovered a disturbing similarity between Nady’s line at Elsinore at age 22 and that of former Angel and Padre third baseman George Arias in the same park at the same age 7 years earlier. Lest we be quick to dismiss this concern, recall that Arias came from a major university program and was very well regarded as a prospect — at least as well regarded as Nady is now. (28 Jun 2002)

If he can lick the injuries and build on what he accomplished during the final two months of last season, expect Nady to arrive in San Diego sometime around the All-Star break [2003]. Although he may not put up big numbers right away, he’ll eventually be a force in the middle of the order. The peak of .280 with 30+ homers I projected for him last year still sounds about right to me. (15 Jan 2003)

Before the injury to Phil Nevin, Nady was slated to spend the year at Portland. Instead, he was pushed to learn a new position at the big-league level. He started out strong, failed to adjust when the league figured him out, went back to Triple-A, and finished strong with the big club. Nady’s career path has been a little skewed due to his own injuries and those of others, but take a look at how he compares with another guy who came up relatively late and blossomed in his second season:

    AB  BA OBP SLG ISO
XN 371 267 321 391 124
MO 535 282 326 415 133

 XB/H BB/K AB/HR OPS+
  273  324  41.2  92
  272  528  38.2  93

MO is Magglio Ordonez and hit .301/.349/.510 the following year, with 31 homers. No two players follow the same path, of course, but Nady has had success in the past and it’s not unreasonable to think that given 550 at-bats he could post a .285ish BA, 825ish OPS, and 25 or so jacks. That’s about what Nady’s numbers would look like if he took a similar jump to that made by Ordonez at age 25. Will it happen? Who knows. But I like Nady’s chances more than his 712 OPS as a rookie ordinarily would warrant. (9 Jan 2004)

I still believe that Nady is good enough to play every day. But right now what the numbers tell me is that he’s good enough to abuse bad pitching, and the jury is out on the rest. (We’re looking at who Nady has had the most success against, not how he’s fared against all pitchers.) Viewing things in that light, I can at least understand Bruce Bochy’s reluctance to expose his young slugger to some of the league’s better pitchers. (22 Aug 2005)