He's no worse than Posada defensively. Jorge was routinely roasted in the NY papers for his "unsavvy" play behind the plate. He'd make stupid decisions, fail to block blockable pitches, and occasionally lose games. No team fails to make the playoffs because of one bad defensive player, unless that player is just extraordinarily awful. MB is not that bad defensively. You have to make choices when building a team. There are very few great defenders who hit a ton, ARod, Tejada, Lee and Pujols come to mind. If you got a great lineup, you can sacrifice some O in certain spots to insert the D. However, the Cubs do not have a great lineup, and they need Barrett's O. If they find two stud corner OF, a capable CF and somebody other than Neifi at short, then I'm all for dealing MB. But until they do that, they must find a way to get by with him in the lineup. And they can. I agree with the point you're making, but Posada has been significantly better defensively than Barrett over his career. This is the first year Posada's been below average defensively(Rate below 100) since 1999.