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How about a hybrid? James Earl Shatner.

Do you like it because they are going to pay the Yankee rate for production? In that scenario, the Sox will pay about 2/3 of what the Yankees pay for their 3B, and they'll get about 2/3 the production.

http://www.talksox.com/forum/talk-sox-forum/13551-hoyer-comfort-dealing-sox.html

Well, the run production / run prevention relationship is blind to position. I'll agree that it is harder to find defensive prowess at a corner that can trade on a 1 for 1 basis with offensive production variation, but it shouldn't be discounted when it does just because it's at a corner.

You need to get a Robert Redford (think A River Runs Through It) voice over app for my posts.

Beltre isn't ideal, but I think the anti-Beltre crowd is guilty of two things. One, they are understating the impact of putting his swing into Fenway Park. Two, they are overstating how much the people that would support signing him like him. I don't think anyone that would be in favor of signing Beltre thinks he's "the missing piece". To the first point, peruse his career hit chart at mlb.com in his player page and look at his performance in Safeco, and select HR, 2B, and FO to be shown. Draw the line where Fenway's LF fence would be (approximately). It's easy to see that his 48 HR could easily get up into the 65-70 range, while maintaing his 2B total as some of those FB turn into doubles. Does this make him a superstar? No, but without running the calculations, I could see his career home split approaching his career road split, which is a .826 OPS. This isn't elite for a 3B. Not on the offensive side, but there's more to the game. Beltre is consistently one of the best defensive 3B in the game. If you were to, fairly IMO, assume a moderate increase in offense due to park, turn his defense into average to below average and add the run value to his offense, and you are talking about Troy Glaus circa 2008. I can get onboard with that, but that doesn't mean I'll set my britches on fire if it doesn't happen.

No offense, but I'd love to have thousands of dollars I could throw away on entertainment. Perhaps some perspective is in order.

To the parts in bold: No, a thousand times no. I only applied the standard you set with this post. I did not set the bar, you did. I only pointed out how your Steed, the one you found adequate, fell short of your arbitrary standard. My logic is fine. Your ability to remember what you posted seems to be the issue.

Show me where I admitted to something? You were fine with Lowell when there were talks of replacing him with Teixeira, you were fine with Lowell now in talks of replacing him with Beltre. I can only reasonably assume that Lowell is adequate offensively in your mind, ie he's a fit, so my question remains. If Beltre is better in the field and hits for more power, why does his OBP have to be higher than Lowell's to be a fit? Quick hint, there's really only one honest answer to this question, which is that it doesn't need to be better than Lowell to be considered adequate. I'm pushing here because it's clear you are arbitrarily throwing numbers out there, and for some reason when called out for it, you are arbitrarily accusing me of setting a standard I never set. Take your medicine and move on, don't dig deeper. While I agree that a more important discussion is the merits of the options at 1B/3B now that Lowell is likely gone, your question is laughable. You know exactly why people are comparing Lowell to Beltre. You have declared Lowell adequate throughout all discussions pertaining to the CIF positions. You are now declaring Adrian Beltre inadequate. The statistical analysis of your position reveals an inconsistency in your definition of "adequate", which renders your judgment of Adrian Beltre to be arbitrary.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FJKP4nNYgQ4/SkBMqDsRv2I/AAAAAAAACOo/EDIIXQvLIYY/s400/boof.jpg

Mike "Steed" Lowell didn't perform to .350 OBP in 3 of the 4 years he played in Boston. In fact, his high in those 3 years was a .339. Why does Beltre, the better defender, who has more power, need to be better than Lowell in OBP to be considered a fit?

Yeah, reality is usually about 60% of what Boras throws out there (both time and AAV), unless the Yankees get involved, but that won't happen here, so those numbers look about right.

What the f*** does this have to do with what is being asked? JFC you are desperate.

Bay was 4 wins above replacement last year. Hermida was 1.5 in less than a full season's worth of play. You don't think having Matsuzaka and Buchholz in the rotation and having a full year of Martinez at catcher for a full season can make up for that? Don't answer, it's a rhetorical question, we know what you'll say. I'm just reminding you that they can get better in other areas without any transactions occurring.

Per your words, your idea is crap. You're finally seeing things the way most of us do. Well done.

No, "we" haven't moved on. "We" understand why you like, it matching your opinion (which you overvalue). RF was the first attempt by a statistician to look beyond fielding percentage when rating defensive players. When Bill James created this he was working from his house on his own dime and didn't have the resources for something more comprehensive, which would require a staff, access to game tape for all games, and time. When Stats Inc. was started up by John Dewan, you had someone who had the resources to start a venture that would provide the information that he knew there was a market for. Along came ZR (zone rating), which determined how many opportunities each player had inside his fielding zone. Of course, the flaw here was that it assumed each opportunity was equal, and the reality is that some opportunities are more difficult than others. UZR adds the context of evaluating the quality of the opportunties. Obviously, it isn't perfect, but if you consider the methodology, it's attempting to measure defensive range in a fair manner. The main problem is that it still remains subjective, like your opinion, but they at least they have an established set of parameters they use when applying the subjective qualification of each opportunity. The ideal stat would remove the subjectivity. For example, in the future, a sensor system (with miniature transponders on each players uniform - hat, belt, somewhere) could track how far a player had to move to field each ball and how much time they had to get there. The distance/time relationship would be an objective average for each position based on measurable data. IMO, we'll see this, or something similar, in the future as the appetite for meaningful information has not been sated, but where we stand right now is pretty good.

Not enough times to answer my question, apparently.

Gom, they are all flawed. Again, what is the main flaw of RF? Come on, anyone with a brain should be able to determine this within 5 minutes of looking at how it measures defense. I did, and my criticism was confirmed in subsequent reading about it.

"Amazing" This is a very strong descriptive word. Unfortunately, it doesn't get you any closer to demonstrating recognition of league average for a 1B. And, as far as watching the games goes, to my eye, Teixeira has excellent reflexes, and he's tall, so when he lays out he covers some ground and makes a bunch of those plays, but I'm not impressed when he has to move his feet, kind of like Lowell. Given the run value of a missed play, it's not surprising his range scores a little below average (or a little above in other years). EDIT: Still waiting for the critique of Range Factor. I figure a pariah of original thought could come up with the answer in less than 5 minutes. Tick, tock, tick, tock.....still waiting.