Taro,
You've struck out here. The TOUGHER the conditions the more valuable the truly gifted player. If every fly ball hit into the Safeco outfield held up for an extra .5 seconds then the gaps between OF's decrease. Plays become easier and the gy on your flank now gets to the ball in the gap that you don't. But the more difficult the conditions the higher premium on gifted players.
Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus win a bunch of US Opens precisely because the conditions were so dang tough. In the last 6 seconds of a playoff game, with two guys draped all over him, Michael Jordan and Larry Bird seperated themselves from the norm.
Guti is a fine CF, but he isn't made better (compared to the crowd) by favorable conditions.
Guti is going to play MLB for a long time. He'll be patrolliing OFs when he is 37 years old, barring injury. However, I think we've seen something like the norm of his offensive prowess. 94 or 95 OPS.
Interestingly, I'm not sure he's getting killed, offensively, by Safeco. His numbers the last two years are eerily similar to the previous two years in Cleveland.
He may go wild and reach 112 OPS one year....but he's just as likely to droop to 80.
Don't get me wrong...I like Guti, but I think his value as a chip exceeds his value on the field. When that happens, the wise GM rolls the player over. We have a guy who can approach what he does in the OF and has better bat potential.
If you can turn him into something better.....do it.
moe
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