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I agree with the between-Bay-and-Ibanez comp, but as a lefty he's FINE for Safeco.
That point aside, I hear you on the larger point about needing 100 OPS+ hitters with good gloves instead of 60.
But we need SOME hitters who can own good pitching if we plan to get anywhere in the playoffs.  Ethier holds his own against power pitching and destroys the weaker stuff.  Flyball or GB pitching makes no difference to him.
I don't mind if you don't want him SPECIFICALLY, but Smoak can't be our only RBI man.  Not unless you want him to be the roided-up version of Gonzo to power the lineup.  Seven 100 OPS+ bats plus Ichiro plus Smoak looks great...until the 100 OPS+ guys bottom out because the difference between an average hitter and a bad one isn't actually that much.
And Gardner isn't cheap as far as what it'd take to get him - he's got lots of club control, which makes him VERY valuable, and not just to us but to the Yankees as well who need SOME cheap players to ameliorate the roster devastation that the aging A-Rod/Posada/Jeter/etc are about to wreak on New York.
I dunno what Ethier will cost, but i agree he's not coming cheap.  If you could get him for 14x5 you'd be doing well. We'd need more payroll in 2013+.
Or we'd get 1.5 years of Ethier at LF/DH to give us a stopgap to find ANOTHER hitter, then take his Type A status, draft some new players and spend his money somewhere else.
The LF market next year is not strong, IIRC, and the DH market is, as always, filled with very expensive players or fading ones.
*shrugs* I'm happy to add a Kubel at DH or a Gardner in LF...but adding both just Civic-izes the lineup and REQUIRES us to hit on the kids.  It forces us to build a MOTO from within.  Ethier + Kubel or Gardner + Fielder are both doable - and of the two I'd prefer the Gardner/Fielder duo as well.
And again, I'm a big enough believer in Rendon to be willing to jump on a Kubel/Gardner pairing with a MOTO of Ackley, Rendon and Smoak.  We DO need better players all around, not just big bats.
Smoak just can't be the one to do all the heavy lifting, IMO, that's all.
~G