To evaluate the effectiveness of a baseball player, statistics have evolved into much more than wins and losses or home runs and RBI. Chicago White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu is the perfect example as to why perception isn’t necessarily reality with regard to offensive production.

On Monday, FanGraphs published a piece detailing how the White Sox could run this offseason depending on which direction the front office wanted to take the organization. In that article, Dave Cameron said this about Abreu:

“Abreu has lost some value by going the wrong way offensively the last few years, but he finished the second half on a big upswing, and remains vastly underpriced relative to what it will cost to sign an inferior player like Mark Trumbo.”

As important as traditional stats are, we all know they’re not the be-all, end-all in today’s game. Actually, they probably don’t mean a whole lot to quite a few executives and talent evaluators.

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