I am taking into account context. I think you're failing to. The Cubs were fine scoring runs without Soriano several weeks ago. They had players doing very well. Some of those players have cooled considerably - Lee, Soto, Theriot are all way down from their April numbers, ARam is off a little and even Fukudome is down a tick. They might turn it around now, but the point is, they were clicking and the team was winning while getting nothing from Soriano. So replacing him with Cedeno (who was red hot for about 8 games) may have actually helped the team. Now Soriano's on fire when many of our best hitters were slumping when he got injured. So he was carrying more offensive weight (which now must be replaced). Of course you have to consider context. The context before was slumping Soriano, smoking team. Now it's hot streak Soriano and slumping team. How the other players are doing has nothing to do with Soriano. That's not what we were discussing. We were discussing what impact Soriano's loss has on the team. If Soriano had been carrying the team during the games leading right up to the injury, you may have a point. However, that wasn't the case. The week before he got hurt he went 1 .269 /.345 /.423 (1 HR, 1 RBI). The players that are hot would have still been hot with Soriano playing and the players who are cold would have still been cold. How those guys do in his absence is another argument. Team without red hot Soriano = Team without ice cold Soriano We were discussing