Quote:
Originally Posted by JiriHrdina
What are the holes for next season you think?
Short-stop: Johnny Mac is great but not a starter.
LF: Do you give Reed another shot a full-time job?
Catcher: I like Zaun but he's had a bad year at the plate and can't seem to throw out runners.
What else are we looking at? Depends of course on what other moves are made but for now what holes would one ideally like to plug?
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SS.
Now, next year ideally a LF platoon of Johnson/Stairs next year will likely out-perform anything else you can find on the open market, but here is how I view it. If they kept their numbers from this year with their current split rates, you'd be looking at the Reed/Stairs platoon putting up a combined OPS of around .950. Amazing production from that position. You can't really upgrade that.
There is only one upgrade from Zaun on the market who will help your team next year and that is Posada - Catchers/SSs are almost all right handed, and I refuse to blame the teams SB woes on Zaun. Our pitchers refuse outright to throw out of the stretch with runners on base, most of the time they steal runners right off of the pitchers, not zaun. He doesn't have a great arm, but it is decent. Even Pudge in his prime would be having trouble throwing guys out with this pitching staff. Holding the runners is a team game. Barrett would be a pretty big risk, he is having a bad year, and he has always been LHP heavy on his numbers. Not to mention what kind of team guy he is remains to be seen.
One of these positions: DH/3B/RF/CF needs to be filled with a real left handed power threat, because finding a Lefty to fill the C/SS positions is near impossible. The only way you can accomplish that without removing someone established from one of those 4 positions I mentioned is if you were able to add 2 guys like Arod/Posada, guys with virtually no splits to speak of (even though Arod bats right handed). That is a pipe dream. The thing is JP has really pushed himself into a corner filling ALL their power positions with a righties or a lefty who isn't really a power guy (even though Overbay when healthy, I really do like him and he is very good). Simply replacing overbay with another left hander, would be 3 steps forward and 2 steps back IMHO - you need a lot more balance in this lineup.