Lee to avoid DL (p. 2)

[Guest]

There's a fallacy that there's a 1-1 replacement in action here. That's simply not the case.

 

The majority of DeRosa's ab's were planned to go to Fontenot. Another set of them to Bradley. Miles was primarily brought in to be the replacement to Cedeno. But there's no clean 1-1 there, all those roles overlap.

 

I'm not talking about straight up production though. DeRosa's value was that he could be productive and fill numerous positions on the field (obviously not at once . . . ). That would be even more valuable this year with Bradley being added.

 

We've already seen the defensive hit we took when Aramis went down and Fontenot had to play there (though he seems to have improved somewhat). Already Miles and Freel are getting at bats that we didn't know they'd be getting (with Aramis out til August) and DeRosa could have filled that void.

 

DeRo could have gotten plenty of at-bats in the supersub/first off the bench role. He probably wouldn't have started every day, but he would have gotten plenty of starts between having to rest Bradley and Ramirez.

 

And as for Tim's argument, yes, sometimes it is best to sell high, and DeRo's value wasn't going to get any higher. If you pull the trigger on that trade, Hendry did it at the right time. However, he didn't get anything close to what DeRo was worth. And also, sometimes the best trade is the one you don't make. We're really missing him now when we really could have used him. It's not like it was a huge stretch to foresee Bradley or Aram missing significant time with an injury.

 

Exactly. I think you can add Soriano and his leg pains to the list of reasons to have kept DeRosa. And I say that not even a year after DeRosa played LF in Soriano's place because of Soriano's DL stint.

 

If you sign Ibanez or Dunn or some other durable OF, maybe you can afford to trade DeRosa. But when you sign the most oft injured player in baseball, it seems like a no brainer that you should also keep one of the best utility players in the game as insurance.

 

Every game that Aaron Miles starts is another game that DeRosa's bat could have been in there instead. By the end of this season, we will all be sick to our stomachs as to how many starts Aaron Miles got.

[biittner77]

I'm sure the Cubs felt that Hoffpauir could fill in in RF when Bradley was out. Derosa was a valuable player at 2nd and as a backup at 3rd but I wouldn't want him to be the regular or even the semi regular RF.

[dew1679666265]

I'm sure the Cubs felt that Hoffpauir could fill in in RF when Bradley was out. Derosa was a valuable player at 2nd and as a backup at 3rd but I wouldn't want him to be the regular or even the semi regular RF.

 

If he was our only option in RF, I would agree. But he's a solid bat to bring off the bench if your regular RF is injured. If Bradley were to go down for the year, I'd want another RF other than DeRo. But as long as it's just shorter DL stints for Bradley, DeRosa would have been a good option.