Baseball Gif Thread

At SS, I agree. I wonder if he had been primarily played at 2B or CF if you would feel the same way. Guess we'll never know.

I wasn’t referring to him overall as a player. I meant that is the type of play that might happen with a -10 defense guy.

Jeter was a -10 defense guy.

But how does it damage or delay things?  What’s the time period for that?   Let’s say by Sunday, Holliday is 3-45 and they send him down.  He was up here for what, 2 weeks at that point? Was he delayed?  Did that hurt his development? Did Cowser’s development get hurt or damaged last year?  Did GRod get damaged? Thats the thing.  To me, using words like that sound to me that they are career altering.    For me, if that occurs, the player wasn’t going to be mentally tough to handle adversity no matter what his development was..that’s a big reason why I don’t believe in “rushed”.  

If Stewart had been that guy with a bat we wouldn't have cared that much. He was a 0 bat -10 glove guy. A better example would be Nelson Cruz maybe.

Personally I take rushed to mean something a bit milder. I think you're using the word more absolutely than many do, and that's the disagreement.  I would call a player rushed if they were brought up before they were ready to perform, and it damaged or delayed their development. Particularly if there was reason to doubt their readiness before the callup. But it doesn't have to be something that ruins them or that they never recover from for me to be willing to call it rushing.  Now I'm not sure they rushed Holliday under either definition, since there was tons of evidence supporting the idea of bringing him up. 

IMHO defensive prowess at premium positions generally benefits your pitchers to a more significant degree than offensive prowess. So C, CF, SS, 2B are positions that I would be OK with one or two players who profile +10 D/-10 O. I think the corners, (LF, RF, 3B and 1B) are where you can have one or two +10 O/-10 D types. 3B tends to be a corner spot where a stellar defender can change the course of a game or series, however.  I also believe that defensive skill is more highly correlated with superb athleticism; whereas offensive skills are less highly correlated with athleticism.  In other words, it's rare to see a great defender who is not a great athlete; but there are many excellent hitters who are not very athletic.  I think the O's like players who can defend at a very high level. I think they like exceptional athletes who are versatile defensively. They have been fortunate that many of their prospects are superb on both sides of the ball.