I hope you are just assuming he'll never bat leadoff, because this team should be hoping to win a championship. Joe Mather played this role last year and got 10 leadoff starts. This is literally true of every position player in all of professional baseball who isn't good. We threw around names all offseason for the reserve infield spot. It's not as if this just came up. I would have loved Ronny Cedeno in that spot for the $1 million or whatever he got from the Cardinals. If we don't want to spend that much, I liked Ryan Raburn as a better fit than what we brought in. That's two off the top of my head. I dispute the idea that he brings positives. If you can't hit at all, and he can't, you could at least play a decent defensive middle infield, which he also can't. Going by bWAR, he's worse than Augie Ojeda or Jose Macias It sure seems like a guy who has been below replacement, both cumulatively and consistently, for years, is being given the inside track at a major league job because Sveum recruited him and the front office couldn't (or couldn't be bothered) to come up with a useful utility infielder given all offseason. Difference in degree, maybe, but not type.