Bat-First Shortstops
Remember what we do here. This is baseball chat, not Mahogany Row. :- ) You an' me don't decide what's best for the local ballclub.
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Q: Supposing, just covering all contingencies, that it became apparent that Matt Tuiasosopo were an AL cleanup hitter, right now? Then what?
A from KingCorran: Then Jack Wilson ends up on the bench in short order, and trading away Mr. Triunfel no longer causes ANYONE concern. :P
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R/X: If Matt Tuiasosopo could play a below-average shortstop, let's say -10 or -12 runs below the median in the AL, then a .270/.360/.500 bat would give us a whale of a club-controls player. You'd have a Miguel Tejada profile at SS.
(Or, suppose that Tui will shortly be a + bat and - glove at SS ... that he is such a player in development. That amounts to the same thing. You're developing a 2- or 3-wins SS who will be paid peanuts.)
American League bat-first SS's in recent years include Tejada, Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra (a few years earlier), Carlos Guillen, Michael Young, and Jhonny Peralta. All of those guys could have been reasonably pegged at -10 or -15 runs below the glove-first SS's.
But, of course, even after you dock Derek Jeter -15 runs for his glove ... that just lowers him from +55 above replacement "down" to +40 runs above RLP.
Granted, these guys often move off SS once they're 30. But it's not like the Tigers and Rangers didn't play full seasons with Guillen and Young at SS.
Supposing you had a young player who hit .300/.380/.480, but who was a -10 runs shortstop. Would you play him? That's Derek Jeter. Can you win with Derek Jeter? The pitchers don't mind him so much when he scores the winning run for them...
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Thing is, I don't think the Mariners would play a .550 SLG guy at SS if the player were -10, -15 runs on defense. I think he'd move the guy somewhere else. The $64,000 question is, suppose a $425,000 player is an excellent hitter but weak defender at a given position? Are we going with overall contribution, or putting stylistic paradigms first?
Jack Wilson was just extended. He's a given at SS. But he misses a lot of games, and for the games he misses, the M's are staring squarely at a tough decision here: do you want 60 games of Matt Tuiasosopo at SS, if he hits a ton but is bottom-third defensively?
I sure do. If you've got a + bat and a - glove and the player's average ... "average" is pretty good for a benchie, now isn't it.
The M's want D at short. That's their prerogative. Even the substitute role won't be decided until April 6, no matter how Tui hits. But if Josh Wilson is the choice because of paradigm paralysis, SSI is going to rain crumpled paper cups on the field :- )
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Which puts us back where we started. Zduriencik has jammed the roster with dynamic players, all throwing elbows at each other for playing time.
How, for example, do you roster both Matt Tuiasosopo and Mike Sweeney, if they both hit .500 this spring? Nice problem to have.
The question remains. Sometimes a player shows you, in spring training, that he's real good. Supposing Matt Tuiasosopo shows that he's an ML star being born? What do you do about it?
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Smoothest thing is to deal Lopez, I guess. But Tui ain't playing much third.