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Tell that to the White Sox who won a WS on Pitching and Defense. Their team BA was .262 with a .322 OBP and yet they managed to win a WS. they hit a crapload of homers. True..but they had 200 HR to our 194. They had a .262 AVG with a .322 OPB while we had a .270 AVG with a .324 OBP. So what was the difference between the two teams offensively? The difference must be in the clutch hitting because defense means very, very, very little. Yeah, that or exceptional pitching. I'll go with the pitching myself. You don't think that the defense had anything to do with that? I don't think it had much to do with it, no. How's our good defense working out with our pitching this year? I'd question the people that say we have one of the top 10 defenses-only because I can't think of one player on the roster who has played most everyday who I can call good defensively, and there are more people who are below average or average than below average. People have been calling out the outfield defense all year as average to below average, and the infield defense without Lee is not exactly stellar. That should tell you how subjective defense is. Agreed, but if we have a good defense as you said, where is it coming from? What players are good defenders to create this good defense? If the defense has preformed well and you can't tell who the good defensive players are, what does that tell you about defense? Well, there's the flaw. I don't think our defense has performed that well at all-we probably should be between 15th-20th defensively.

Tell that to the White Sox who won a WS on Pitching and Defense. Their team BA was .262 with a .322 OBP and yet they managed to win a WS. they hit a crapload of homers. True..but they had 200 HR to our 194. They had a .262 AVG with a .322 OPB while we had a .270 AVG with a .324 OBP. So what was the difference between the two teams offensively? The difference must be in the clutch hitting because defense means very, very, very little. Yeah, that or exceptional pitching. I'll go with the pitching myself. You don't think that the defense had anything to do with that? I don't think it had much to do with it, no. How's our good defense working out with our pitching this year? I'd question the people that say we have one of the top 10 defenses-only because I can't think of one player on the roster who has played most everyday who I can call good defensively, and there are more people who are below average or average than below average. People have been calling out the outfield defense all year as average to below average, and the infield defense without Lee is not exactly stellar. That should tell you how subjective defense is. Agreed, but if we have a good defense as you said, where is it coming from? What players are good defenders to create this good defense?

How did they downgrade their offense by switching from Cedeno to Izturis at short? That one move alone does not downgrade their offense-it actually upgrades it. Walker leaves the lineup too. True, but he was not needed for the next 2 months anyway. If we want to sign him for 2007, we can do it just as well from another team. If we don't, then the offense will be no worse off in 2007 then it would be if we let him walk after the season. It doesn't matter if our offense gets worse in the final two months of the season right now.

Tell that to the White Sox who won a WS on Pitching and Defense. Their team BA was .262 with a .322 OBP and yet they managed to win a WS. they hit a crapload of homers. True..but they had 200 HR to our 194. They had a .262 AVG with a .322 OPB while we had a .270 AVG with a .324 OBP. So what was the difference between the two teams offensively? The difference must be in the clutch hitting because defense means very, very, very little. Yeah, that or exceptional pitching. I'll go with the pitching myself. You don't think that the defense had anything to do with that? I don't think it had much to do with it, no. How's our good defense working out with our pitching this year? I'd question the people that say we have one of the top 10 defenses-only because I can't think of one player on the roster who has played most everyday who I can call good defensively, and there are more people who are below average or average than below average. People have been calling out the outfield defense all year as average to below average, and the infield defense without Lee is not exactly stellar.

How did they downgrade their offense by switching from Cedeno to Izturis at short? That one move alone does not downgrade their offense-it actually upgrades it.

True, but the stats say that Cleveland should have beaten the White Sox out. They had the same ERA, and scored 49 more runs then the Sox (which was good for 7th in the league-the White Sox finished 13th). If it was a minor thing or not, something happened to give the White Sox ways to win last season-it might have just been luck-but there was certainly something there.

Tell that to the White Sox who won a WS on Pitching and Defense. Their team BA was .262 with a .322 OBP and yet they managed to win a WS. they hit a crapload of homers. True..but they had 200 HR to our 194. They had a .262 AVG with a .322 OBP while we had a .270 AVG with a .324 OBP. So what was the difference between the two teams offensively? Edited: I accidentally spelled OBP OPB. Oops!

Our defense wasn't bad. Our offense sucks. Hendry tried to improve the wrong thing once again. True, but sometimes you have to make the moves when you can get them. He got a chance to improve the defense (and a smaller improvement on offense) now. That leaves the offseason to improve the offense-we weren't going to get a shortstop anyway, so we can still improve the team on offense in the positions we were already going to. The defensive upgrade is not significant enough to make up for the fact that our offense lost Todd Walker and gained Cesar Izturis. We'll address the need for offense in the offseason. I didn't see anyone offering us anything to address our need for offense for Maddux. What kind of impact offense player do you think Maddux could bring us? Exactly..bruce just confirmed in the discussions thread that the Dodgers said no to a deal involving prospects, and that Hendry was looking for prospects first-it's under the one that has the title of Bruce's latest article. So it was the choice of keeping Maddux or adding Izturis-we weren't going to get any other players for him.

True, but we would have traded Walker anyway even if we got Izturis, and if we had wanted to sign Walker this offseason, we still could. So for 2007, the choice at shortstop is Izturis or Cedeno. If you replace Walker with Cedeno permanantly in 2007, that will be the bigger problem for the offense.

Our defense wasn't bad. Our offense sucks. Hendry tried to improve the wrong thing once again. True, but sometimes you have to make the moves when you can get them. He got a chance to improve the defense (and a smaller improvement on offense) now. That leaves the offseason to improve the offense-we weren't going to get a shortstop anyway, so we can still improve the team on offense in the positions we were already going to.

It's a very big leap. How many plays did Cedeno botch up this year? He's got 16 errors in 98 games this year. Izturis is superior to Cedeno at SS. I think Cedeno will fit well at the 2b position. Again lets just let the season play out... Then why not just let Neifi be the starting SS? Where's the need for Izturis when Neifi is under contract for 2007? Because Izturis will be better defensively and offensively in 2007. He's been better in 2006 even coming off his injury, and he will probably improve slightly, while Neifi will continue to decline. Neifi's range is much more limited, which makes him a much better defensive second baseman than shortstop right now.

Izturis is marginally better defensively. He's not the wizard some are proclaiming him to be. He is horrible offensively. Horrible. His defense will not provide enough value to make up for that. He is only 50-60 points OPS wise away from being average at shortstop, and I think he could be much closer to average OPS next season (or if he gets hot this season-this season's numbers are going to fluctuate wildly the next couple of weeks). I think he can make up that with his defense to at least become an average player.

I think he can save us 30-40 runs a year on defense. He can make 4-5 extra outs per week, which will save us 1-2 runs a week. These will come from partly some balls that he can get to that other people cannot, and partly doing things like turning more double plays effectively when he gets the chance. I think 30-40 is on the high side, but whatever. How many runs would someone like Tejada get us over the course of a season with his offense? Hmm-well, I'd say again about 4-5 hits a week, but that will cause us to get 2-3 extra runs a week because some of those will be XBH, so more like 55-60 runs. The difference between the top 5 shortstops and everyone else offensively is too high to make up for the change in defense. But defensively, Tejada is actually very close to being right on par with Izturis making this look even uglier to me. http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/tejadmi01.shtml http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/izturce01.shtml I cannot watch the two shortstops and conclude they are the same defensively. Who has the better range? Izturis. Who commits less errors? Izturis. Getting to balls and not making errors are the two main things that a shortstop is supposed to do on defense, and Izturis is noticeably better on both. (Note: I compared the defensive impact to somebody like Furcal, and I compared offensively to a player like Izturis-I didn't know you wanted to compare to Tejada when this discussion started-Izturis would only have a 15-20 run impact over Tejada on defense, and of course then, Tejada is a much better player than Izturis will probably ever be)

I think he can save us 30-40 runs a year on defense. He can make 4-5 extra outs per week, which will save us 1-2 runs a week. These will come from partly some balls that he can get to that other people cannot, and partly doing things like turning more double plays effectively when he gets the chance. I think 30-40 is on the high side, but whatever. How many runs would someone like Tejada get us over the course of a season with his offense? Hmm-well, I'd say again about 4-5 hits a week, but that will cause us to get 2-3 extra runs a week because some of those will be XBH, so more like 55-60 runs. The difference between the top 5 shortstops and everyone else offensively is too high to make up for the change in defense. first of all, no way he takes away 5 hits a week. that's crazy. second of all, i'd love to see a play where a shortstop takes away an extra base hit. Uh-the last one you quoted was Tejada's offense, which is where the XBH came into play.

I think he can save us 30-40 runs a year on defense. He can make 4-5 extra outs per week, which will save us 1-2 runs a week. These will come from partly some balls that he can get to that other people cannot, and partly doing things like turning more double plays effectively when he gets the chance. I think 30-40 is on the high side, but whatever. How many runs would someone like Tejada get us over the course of a season with his offense? Hmm-well, I'd say again about 4-5 hits a week, but that will cause us to get 2-3 extra runs a week because some of those will be XBH, so more like 55-60 runs. The difference between the top 5 shortstops and everyone else offensively is too high to make up for the change in defense.

I think he can save us 30-40 runs a year on defense. He can make 4-5 extra outs per week, which will save us 1-2 runs a week. These will come from partly some balls that he can get to that other people cannot, and partly doing things like turning more double plays effectively when he gets the chance.

I think those that are somewhat happy with this deal are happy for 2 reasons 1) Yes, a 711 OPS is not that great-but it's about average for a shortstop-average OBP, slightly below average slugging for a shortstop. Combine that with his great defense, and you have a pretty good shortstop. 2)If the choice at short is Izturis or Cedeno, Izturis is a much better player. He is better offensively, and much better defensively. He won't be nearly the hole that Cedeno has been in the lineup-so this is an upgrade in talent. Now we'll see if Hendry can find the offensive player to play at second to go with him. How is Izturis better offensively than Ronny? In Izturis first full year in the majors he hit .232 with a .253 OBP compared to Ronny this year at .255 BA and .280 OBP so far. In his 2nd full season Izturis hit .251 BA and .282 OBP. I really believe Cedeno will progress enough to top that next year. Izturis has already had his career year and has regressed since then although I will give you he's been injured. It certainly is possible that Cedeno will be as good or better than Izturis offensively in 3 years. Cedeno can even make up the year he lost (Izturis's 1st year as a starter was when he was 22, Cedeno 23) if he doesn't get injured like Izturis does. I just don't think he's going to get that much better than Izturis is now, and so I'd rather take the sure thing. It is the same way I felt about the Choi-Lee trade-Lee then was about the player that I thought Choi could be if he developed, so we might as well take the sure thing. Izturis also has potential to improve-many of the great defensive shortstops over the years didn't really start hitting any better than Izturis is until they were 28, 29, 30. Izturis has the same hitting progression until he got hurt, and hasn't had the time since then to see if he can continue that progression.

I think those that are somewhat happy with this deal are happy for 2 reasons 1) Yes, a 711 OPS is not that great-but it's about average for a shortstop-average OBP, slightly below average slugging for a shortstop. Combine that with his great defense, and you have a pretty good shortstop. 2)If the choice at short is Izturis or Cedeno, Izturis is a much better player. He is better offensively, and much better defensively. He won't be nearly the hole that Cedeno has been in the lineup-so this is an upgrade in talent. Now we'll see if Hendry can find the offensive player to play at second to go with him.

Going back to the Dodger deal. There is no gurantee Maddux would return next year. Its better to get something, rather than nothing in return. The same can be said about the Walker deal. Im pretty sure he wasnt coming back next year. Hendry spent 18 months it seemed like, trying to deal Walker. If Izturis can return to his 04 form, then this deal was a wise one by Hendry. Not in this case. Nothing would have been much better than Izturis but I'll be happy to eat my words if he turns into a .330 BA/.390 OBP type of hitter. Until that happens this deal sucks. So it's not a good deal unless he turns into as good of a hitter as Ichiro? The only thing Ichiro would have on him then is some power, and Izturis's slugging would go up if he was hitting that well. If those are the standards, then I guess Hendry can never make a very good deal. LOL...I'll take less than that but if we're wishing, why not wish for the best? :lol: Definitely :D

Going back to the Dodger deal. There is no gurantee Maddux would return next year. Its better to get something, rather than nothing in return. The same can be said about the Walker deal. Im pretty sure he wasnt coming back next year. Hendry spent 18 months it seemed like, trying to deal Walker. If Izturis can return to his 04 form, then this deal was a wise one by Hendry. Not in this case. Nothing would have been much better than Izturis but I'll be happy to eat my words if he turns into a .330 BA/.390 OBP type of hitter. Until that happens this deal sucks. So it's not a good deal unless he turns into as good of a hitter as Ichiro? The only thing Ichiro would have on him then is some power, and Izturis's slugging would go up if he was hitting that well. If those are the standards, then I guess Hendry can never make a very good deal.

Not any good teams have two bats as weak as those in their middle infield. I think Izturis and Cedeno could out-produce Ellis and Crosby in Oakland this year. I know it's the exception rather than the norm, but it is possible. I think there are multiple contenders who are in the neighborhood of a .700 OPS and it's really not a huge difference in the long haul if you're at .650 instead. Of course we need a major upgrade in the outfield spots to be able to hide that at all. OBP is the more important of the two components of OPS, and these guys are both sub .300 OBP guys. Oakland really isn't a good team, they are just the best of a bad division. They are only on pace for 85 wins. Good teams, teams that want to win 90+ games a year and be real contenders, don't go into the season with the ineptitude at both middle infield spots that the Cubs currently have. What makes you think Izturis will be a sub .300 OBP player? He has been over .300 each of the last 3 seasons at age 24, 25, and 26-and played hurt half of last season, and is just coming back this season-do you think he has greater potential to have better numbers next year, or to decline, and why?

Not any good teams have two bats as weak as those in their middle infield. I think Izturis and Cedeno could out-produce Ellis and Crosby in Oakland this year. I know it's the exception rather than the norm, but it is possible. I think there are multiple contenders who are in the neighborhood of a .700 OPS and it's really not a huge difference in the long haul if you're at .650 instead. Of course we need a major upgrade in the outfield spots to be able to hide that at all. Actually, that is true-considering they are outproducing Ellis and Crosby this year as well.

C'mon! You would be comfortable with Neifi Perez at SS instead of Itzurtis going into next year? Abso-frickin-loutely. Defense: Wash (both former GG winners, both actually very good on defense) Offense: Perez has superior numbers, but probably a wash. Cost: Perez Looks simple to me. Don't you think that Iz is a bit more upside to his career then Neifi? I mean you can't be serious? What has he done, either in his minor league or major league career, that's anything better than anything Perez has done? Posted pretty decent numbers for a shortstop in 2004, led the league in hits till he started playing hurt in 2005 (for 2 months), impoved every single year significantly until he got hurt. A shortstop with a degenerative arthritic condition in his elbow doesn't worry you a bit? What if his batting this season is worse because he'll never be the same hitter again? I don't mean to position that as a certainty at all...but it is something that has to be considered here. It actually does concern me somewhat-this trade is risky. If Izturis can just pull up his numbers somewhat though (.275, .324, .367), with his defense he'll be a pretty good shortstop. Not the best shortstop, but just as good as say the Cardinals have with Eckstein. Izturis proved for the year and a third before the injury that when healthy he can produce those numbers at least (he was actually doing better then that all that time) and if he is healthy again, then those numbers should be there. It all depends on his health.

Not any good teams have two bats as weak as those in their middle infield. The Cardinals have had two bats in the middle infield that aren't to a 700 OPS all season.

C'mon! You would be comfortable with Neifi Perez at SS instead of Itzurtis going into next year? Abso-frickin-loutely. Defense: Wash (both former GG winners, both actually very good on defense) Offense: Perez has superior numbers, but probably a wash. Cost: Perez Looks simple to me. Don't you think that Iz is a bit more upside to his career then Neifi? I mean you can't be serious? What has he done, either in his minor league or major league career, that's anything better than anything Perez has done? Posted pretty decent numbers for a shortstop in 2004, led the league in hits till he started playing hurt in 2005 (for 2 months), impoved every single year significantly until he got hurt.