Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
3B is a wasteland in FA past Rendon. The roster is too old and the farm too barren to try and thread the needle with him. They should have traded for and re-signed Donaldson when they had a chance last year. That extra 6 WAR and near 40 homers may have come in handy when needing to balance out the lineup.
Edman might be the best internal option, but he's more of a super utility guy.
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Can DeJong be a 3 win 3b and Edman a 2.5-3 win SS?
Seems like a tough ask for both of them, but not impossible. I really hate moving a guy down the defensive spectrum when he established that he can play credible SS, though. Paul has turned himself into a pretty damn valuable player there on defense alone.
Eh, maybe I don't dick with him. For as much heat as he took this season, he showed additional development in his approach. His BB has reached tolerable levels and his K rate declined as well. If he can sneak that BB rate to say 10% and get that K rate down just a tick more to say 21%, then normalize his BABIP to match some pretty good hard hit rates, he can have a hell of a nice offensive season. Sure would like to see him even out a bit but there's value in a guy who's white hot at times if the rest of the lineup isn't dependent on him.
So much of that offense comes down to the fact that Goldschmidt and Ozuna were acquired to be steady, consistent 3-4 hitters and pretty much never were. Both guys got intermittently hot but only for short periods and took WAY too many noncompetitive ABs in between. And of course Carpenter.
If your key guys are your key guys, then a guy like DeJong can be perfect in that he can carry the team for a few weeks. A guy like Bader can be hidden because his defense is just so damn good. But when you've got $70+ million or so plowed into Goldschmidt, Ozuna, Carpenter and Molina, let alone the additional $15 million or so in Fowler...well you just don't have a lot of rope left because those guys largely exhausted it through under-performing.