Dojji

That's actually pretty damn close to 3 a game. That 339 putouts was in about 120 games. That's not just good, it's hella good. His range factor (I know, I know) in AAA was higher than Crisp's in MLB in 07 which was his career year. He "tore it up" in the minors, defensively at any rate.

Just to illustrate the point: In 2007 Coco Crisp produced 2.6 wins above replacement through just his defense, disregarding his bat which was pretty average. Ross and Sweeney have never produced that many wins above replacement on either side of the ball -- offensively or defensively. In fact if Lin could replicate that season, which he has the talent to do, and then hit at replacement level, he's a better option than either of those two. This is not the Padres. We have the offense to avoid diminishing returns on dWAR. It makes more sense than you'd think.

Pretty sure that means you've never really seen Che-Hsuan Lin in action. Even in this world of numbers, some things have to be seen to be believed. And you're right. It's about a combination of run support and run prevention. Where we differ is that I feel we're already as far as we need to be on offense, and our efforts will do the most good if we work on improving the defense. Which is why I think we can stand a light bat and great glove in CF, and Ells in right, better than we can stand a pretty good bat and dismal glove like Ross, or a mediocre-at-everything career backup like Sweeney. With the offense the rest of the lineup can provide, one or two purely defensive players can be sustained without killing that run differential, and doing so should increase out chance to win over more offense-first options.

There's these newfangled things called "reasons." They're all the rage for promoting discussions because they actually allow someone to understand why you hold a given opinion.

Iglesias is a stud. This guy would be a 2-3 win player defensively, maybe more. He's not an all-time defender, but he's close. And he's got enough offensive chops that with a few years to really work on it, he should get it down, like Vizquel and Ozzie Smith did. But you gotta stay patient with him and not go to Aviles just because he's hitting .210 at one point and making us all fret about black holes in the lineup That's going to be hard, because it's not the way we're used to thinking about any position on the diamond anymore. But with the steroid era over and offense on the decline at the moment, we're going to have to start if we don't want to be left behind. We can't tolerate the failures in pitching that we used to be able to bury with offense -- no one can. So we have to start thinking about defense a lot more than we used to.

Lin is only a stretch because CF is already competently handled. He would *still* upgrade center defensively, and Jacoby would be a far better right fielder than any of our current options. That whole question in my mind centers around whether you'd rather see Cody Ross butcher RF defensively for 27 outs or Lin struggle offensively for about 4 a night. On the theory that Lin has the speed to beat out enough dinky-dunk hits to bat at about the same level he did in AAA (where he got more than a little unlucky) I'd trust him to be a slap and run guy who could make some contact and test the defense -- the kind of guy V likes to have in the bottom of his batting orders. And if we did have Lin, Ellsbury, and Crawford, that is one heck of a fast outfield with 3 plus to plus-plus runners in it. I wasn't joking about how small the outfield gaps would be. Combine that with useful speed from Pedroia and Iglesias. and I can't remember the Sox ever having a faster baseball team.

Ellsbury's arm isn't THAT bad, and it's not like we've had a really strong arm in RF since maybe Brunansky. You can get more outs by shrinking the gaps than you can by having a great arm over a weak one. As for Lin -- that's possible. I'm not going to dispute that Lin has a weak bat. He's actually a highly disciplined hitter though, so I wouldn't be as sure of that as you are behaving.

With our outfield in question for a while offensively, I'm curious what would happen if Valentine decided to take a chance and go full-bore after defensive upgrades. Three spots I can think of where you could sacrifice O for D and get quite a boost to your run prevention if that's the way you decide to go. First obviously, is shortstop. Putting Jose Iglesias at short could pay off even if he doesn't hit much, if he makes the lives of his pitchers a few runs easier in any given game. If you believe that defense can have a large impact on the game and can provide as many WAR or more as any bat we're likely to get at short, which is a very reasonable assumption. then it's time to go with Iglesias. The second, less obvious one is centerfield. I got nothing against Ellsbury, but the most lavish your praise can get for his defense in center is "Yeah, he good enough." He's not a liability as a defensive centerfielder, In fact he's an outright competent defensive centerfielder. What he isn't, is a great defensive centerfielder. Enter Che-Hsuan Lin. Lin won't hit for much. Offensively he's pretty much a slap hitter. But as a defensive centerfielder I've never seen a guy who can cover ground like this guy can, and I'm including Coco Crisp in that. That and he has a plus arm which we haven't had in our outfields in forever. His speed is a match for Jacoby's and he takes far better reads on the ball off the bat. He's a defensive superstar, and if he could hit .250 and get on base OK, with his speed, he's someone's starting centerfielder. Why not ours? i'm sure the indispensable asset that is Ryan Sweeney can take a backseat to a guy who actually does something at an elite level. And I think the experiment would easily be worth sitting Cody Ross for as well. If we need to prevent some runs this year because the staff is questionable, would starting Lin at centerfield and moving Ellsbury to right really be a terrible move? Crawford in left, Lin in center, Ells in right, and you have the smallest outfield gaps in major league baseball. Good luck getting anything but an absolutely blistered liner down on the outfield grass. And if you combine that with Iglesias and Pedroia at short and second respectively, and that starts to be a potential league leading defense. Finally? Catcher. But here we have a problem. Shoppach is just a grass-is-greener guy. As a defensive catcher all he has going for him is better receiving hands. Much, much, much better receiving hands mind, but still, it's his only definite asset over Salty. This is a situation where the guy really needs to hit at least a little before you can let him play his glove in the field. Salty is a bigger upgrade over Shoppach offensively than Shoppach is over Salty defensively. If you want to go D here you really need a catch and throw guy. A real one, not just a guy who is considered a defensive catcher because he's not an offensive catcher and you don't want to default to calling your GM an outright idiot. Until then I guess it's a question of who you trust better to improve. At this point, at least in my mind, it's Salty. Neither one is really going to complete the picture all that well as a run prevention unit though, which seems to be a thing the Sox FO doesn't obsess over when it comes to their catchers anyway. As for a lineup? Ellsbury, RF Pedroia, 2B Gonzalez, 1B Youkilis, 3B Ortiz, DH Salty*, C Crawford, LF Lin, CF Iglesias, SS Thoughts? *Yeah, Salty 6th is a little high in the order for him but you need something between Ortiz and Crawford as both have large platoon weakinesses, and I'm deliberately risking 2 poor offensive performers to max the D, so some chances need to be taken with the lineup. And actually, if Lin and Iglesias can make any contact at all, that bottom of the lineup might play up a bit. It isn't short on speed, and if Lin and Iglesias can make some situtaional contact, it might allow Valentine to play his "real baseball" down there where runs might not otherwise be created.

I didn't say that. It has to do with the role you use him in. If he's a starting outfielder for your team, you need a better one. As a roleplayer he's tolerable. Since we're one injury away from having Che-Hsuan Lin in our outfield I really do think Damon is a very good idea. Not that Lin is aweful, but he's defense-first and practically defense-only, that might not work for a Red Sox outfielder. Fantastic defender, best CF we'd have had since Coco Crisp in 07, but he won't hit more than about .240 and won't back that up with much power. Pretty sure that even if he's off a bit from where he used to be, Damon could beat that.

Can we be honest here? Ryan Sweeney is a Gabe Kapler/Mitch Maier/David Murphy type. Useful as a viable reserve but no one really wants them to start too often.

Which Damon can also do while adding some speed to the mix. Damon had about a 110 OPS+ last year. I strongly doubt he'd be a liability.

fail

If Crawford starts the season on the DL you could do a lot worse.

http://espn.go.com/boston/mlb/story/_/id/7657680/fenway-park-listed-national-registry-historic-places ****. Now they're NEVER going to upgrade.

So maybe those who weren't sure we'd seen the last of Wakefield were right to wonder. I can see a scenario where he becomes the least horrible option.

I'd get Wake out of retirement before I went to Zito. That's exactly the kind of pitcher you don't bring to Fenway Park.

... or Oswalt.

Prince Felix is a common nickname for Doubront at Soxprospects.

You got some facts to back up that 31%-is-average thing? There's a lot of catchers that routinely throw out 20-25% of baserunners.

Salty threw out 31% last year. Sure they ran on him a lot because people don't respect his arm, but 31% is good enough that they'll start respecting it a bit more. What we don't have is a guy with great catcher's tools. Both Salty and Lavs are "maybe good enough on a great day" just like like Tek and V-Mart before them. (and don't give me guff about bringing Tek into it -- he was as good defensively as he was because he was smart, not because he had a great defensive toolset, that's just the truth) Not surprising. The absolutely unreasonable offensive standards we demand of our catchers means that that's the type the GM is going to bring in. I'm not sure we're even trying to promote the real catch and throw types.

I'll defend him if he's worth defending. Not the first time I've stood alone against the tide of the short-tempered.

It's going in a circle because two muleheaded people (one in particular who has herself a real problem with the concept of putting the words "I'm" and "wrong" together in that order under any circumstances) won't FREAKING DROP IT.