I’m a big fan of Uncle Earl. Didn’t know they were into baseball, though.

I’m sitting in a lawn chair at the corner of Euclid and East Ninth already.

Mauer’s durability scares me. If he’s not straight up on the DL (2005, 2007) he always seems to have little nagging stuff. Probably true of most catchers, but for a 25 year old catcher, I don’t know how well it bodes for his long-term sticking potential behind the plate.

400+ OPS from a catcher is DAMN sexy though.

Hello odradek,

I figured you used it as an extreme example, but Nick Punto is like John McDonald (well, not THAT low, though Punto isn’t McDonald’s equal with the glove either), but those two are closer together than any of the guys you mentioned.

“the Indians have failed in the corners for some time.”

That depends on how the rest of your team is constituted; why is it that the corners MUST have power, especially if CF, SS, and C have that power that you don’t expect? In my opinion, it’s not the fact that your corner OF or 1B need to have power; it’s the idea that you have 3-4 guys with power on your team that is the main goal, regardless of where they play. Yes, it’s unusual that you have them at CF, SS, and C and not at LF, 1B, but the main point is, the Indians have that power, whereas teams like the Twins, Tigers, and Royals don’t – in my opinion, they’ve failed to provide that power that you expect on a team (especially the Twins, who haven’t had any significant HR hitters outside of Morneau since the early 1990s, nearly 20 years ago, in a ballpark that is not an extreme pitcher’s park like Dodger Stadium or Oakland Coliseum is).

That (referring to the Twins’ lineups over the past 20 years) constitutes true failure in my mind when it comes to power, not the fact that the Indians don’t have power in the typical positions on the diamond. The fact that the Indians have power on their team doesn’t lead me to think that the fact that they don’t have power on the corners as a failure. An area to improve upon, sure, but a failure? Not in my opinion – I think you have to look at the constitution of the lineup as a whole rather than just look at one or two places in the lineup based on where they play on the baseball diamond, as Thomas mentions in the article I linked to in my post above.

That’s why I and some others are looking forward to Brantley being able to show what he can do at the ML level when the time comes, even if he can only play LF – he fills the presence of a prototypical leadoff hitter we really haven’t had since the days of Kenny Lofton (all due respect to Grady, whose power and combination of skills can really be utilized in the #3 spot or somewhere in the middle-of-the-order to add to his RBI totals and boost the offense that much more if Brantley can establish himself as that prototypical leadoff hitter we are expecting him to become). If Brantley allows Grady to do that, I will not see having Brantley in LF as a “failure,” since it helps to improve the lineup as a whole. Again, that’s why I don’t think you can look at just one or two pieces of the lineup and constitute them as failures without looking at how the whole lineup is affected and how it performs.

Just my 2 cents.

How’s the view up there on that high horse, V?

I will not allow you to suppress my subtle expressions of admiration for Bobby Timmons.

That’s true, but it is odd that the Indians have failed to come up wirh a suitable corner outfielder for seven years. I’d like to think Choo will break that stretch.

That’s pretty much my point. Ordadek says Garko and Francisco fell to 7-8 in the batting order because they aren’t any good. Fair enough. But the data suggests that they are as good, or better, than the players who fell into those slots on other teams. Not only that, but quite a few of these 7-8 hitters play key defensive positions, making upgrades more difficult.

That’s the point that I hadn’t really thought about before. Namely, that if you must have weak spots on your offense, there could be a slight advantage to having them at the 1B-LF-DH positions, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. We have LaPorta at the ready and a whole slew of corner types behind him. Most teams have guys of that skill set in their system, plus this type of player is fairly readily available via trade or, at the moment, free agency. If your catcher is OPS’ing at a league-average .715, many teams (but thankfully not the Indians) would be stuck with him.

If every team but the Indians had an 850 OPS first-baseman and ours was 650, it doesn’t mean we don’t suck at scouting 1Bs just because our SS happens to OPS 900 while no other team has one above 700.

Again, odradek, you’re automatically presuming we HAVE to have the prototypical power hitters in those positions.

Again, I don’t think that’s necessary or the case; as mentioned above, if Brantley does establish himself as that prototypical leadoff hitter and plays LF and moves Grady, our CF, down in the order, does that mean Brantley is a failure because he “only” plays LF and doesn’t hit for the power you expect out of a “prototypical” or “usual” LF, even though Grady provides more power and production than virtually every other CFer out there?

Again, I think you have to look at the whole of the lineup, not just one or two positions and grade them based on how other teams construct their lineups. Of course, every team would love to have power hitters at every position in the lineup, just like we did with the 1995 Indians, but again, as Thomas mentioned in his article, the fact that Brantley can (hopefully) fill that prototypical leadoff hitter role, even while playing LF, has value in itself and helps to strengthen the Indians’ offense (mostly because Brantley’s skills are fully utilized in the leadoff spot, while Grady’s power and overall skills can be even more utilized lower in the order to take advantage of guys who are usually more on base than the lower part of the order that comes ahead of him now, which will only boost his RBI production when he does hit those HRs and/or hit for a solid BA). Additionally, you really can’t expect any team (unless you’re the Yankees, and maybe the Red Sox) to put together 9 power hitters in a lineup; it seems you’d usually have 3-5 at most, so if you have that amount in your lineup, I don’t see that as a “failure,” even if they are not in the positions they have traditionally been in.

So, again, I think you have to look at the whole of the lineup and how it produces, not just look at one or two positions and say that the indians have “failed” at those positions because they don’t have the prototypical power sluggers that other teams have at those positions. After all, who’s to say that we’re not entering a new offensive era where more power hitters and offensive powerhouses play more in the middle of the diamond, rather than on the corners? There are other teams besides the Indians who have these types of players – Joe Mauer, Michael Young, Robinson Cano, Chase Utley, etc.

I think the sum of the power hitters you have in the lineup is more important than WHERE those power hitters play on the diamond.

Just my 2 cents.