Jacque Jones aka J-Man

Jacque Jones is always smiling. Actually, he might not be smiling, but he always looks like he is smiling. To explain, I am going to force you to remember Bubba in Forrest Gump. Bubba always had his gums sticking out; likewise, Jacque always has his mouth in a smiling position. Whether he's running, hitting or fielding, Jacque always is smiling. However, it is not in a big fule-face smile. Just a little, smirky mouth half-open type of smile. Wow, I bet you never expected to read that much about Jacque Jones' smiling patterns in your entire life.

Jacque made his Major League debut back in June of 1999, but it was not until last season that he really got comfortable. You see, Tom Kelly was always platooning Jacque and protecting him from lefthanded pitching. When Ron Gardenhire was named the new manager, his first decision was to make Jacque his leadoff man everyday regardless of which hand the starting pitcher used to throw. To finally have a manager's confidence did wonders for Jacque as he had easily his best year in the majors. He began the season with a leadoff homerun, added another homerun later on Opening Day, and never looked back while setting career highs in batting average, slugging percentage, on base percentage, doubles, runs and RBIs.

However, while his season numbers appear to be very good, they are actually much better (or much worse) than they appear. Jacque still had a remarkable platoon split last season, justifying Tom Kelly's apprehension to placing him in the starting lineup against lefties, as he hit .333 with power against righties, but just .213 against lefthanders. Not only did he struggle to hit lefties, he did not look good doing it as he struck out almost one-third of the time. In short, Jacque is desperately in need of a platoon mate (BOBBY KIELTY!!!).

Defensively, Jacque was a centerfielder as recently as 2000 when Torii was sent back to the minors. He has exceptional range which makes him a defensive weapon in leftfield. I believe that Jacque has the most range of any leftfielder in baseball as evidenced by the number of balls that he catches well into foul territory. The fact that Torii covers so much ground in centerfield does help him as he can shade more towards the line than an average leftfielder and rarely (once about or month or so) does a ball land between them in the left-center gap.

This season, Jacque began the year hitting for a very high batting average while taking his aversion to walks to an extreme level. Slowly, his batting average has fallen to right around .300, but he is on pace for fewer than twenty walks. With just a little plate discipline, Jacque could really take the next step and become an elite outfielder, but his career is slowly passing by. Torii has finally begun to take walks and it would be to the great benefit of the Twins if he would share his plate discipline with his fellow outfielder. If that does not work, I highly recommend having his mother in attendance at every game because he performs his best when he is around. While there are sample size issues (obviously if we are only talking about four games), Jacque really was hitting the crap out of the ball on Mother's Day and the three games in San Diego.

I believe Jacque has stated more than once that his nickname is "Double J". Unfortunately, I had already been calling him J-Man by that time and I am simply too stubborn to abandon my chosen nickname. However, I do realize that J-Man is a little weak, so if any of you have better nicknames for Jacque, please let me know.

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