[kpresidente]

Originally Posted by 757690

First, I apologize for getting the platoon stats wrong, I just read it wrong.

Second, if you don't understand that the outs and runs that a defensive player is responsible for, is far greater than just his own assists, then you simply do not understand how the game is played. I am not tying to get personal, but there is no other way for me to put it.
Please address the points that I have made twice now (and will make for a third time). If you do not, there is no point in continuing this discussion.

Get real man. I played baseball until my freshman year in college and would have continued if not for an injury. I think I understand how the game is played. I played in amateur leagues after that with guys who had made it as high as AA until I was 26. Not only that, but I played catcher, and can rattle off every responsibility for every player in the field in every situation if you want me to. Having seen every pitch of every game I played, not to mention having the best view in the stadium of every defensive play, I'll tell you the most important thing to preventing runs is not throwing gopher balls out over the plate.

The knock on Keppinger, and I presume, Fontenot, is their range. Assists exactly measures how many ground balls they got to in position to make a throw. Sure, there's some other things, like cut-off throws in there, but it's not significant.

Don't feed me garbage like "If you don't think X, you don't know baseball", because I know the game through and through. Tell my why or go bother somebody else.

If you want a good example of how important a good defensive SS is, just look at the Rays. They gave up 209 less runs this year than they did last year. A lot of that was better relief pitching and the addition of Garza. But it also was because they got Jason Bartlett to replace Brandan Harris at SS. There is no stat that can show the difference he made, but the entire Rays pitching staff said that Bartlett was the teams MVP because he gave them confidence to let the opposing hitters make contact, and made their job much easier.

Big deal. That's just talk. A lot of playoff teams had bad shortstops. A lot of great shortstops were sitting at home watching games on TV during the postseason.

If Bartlett was really the answer, then how come the Twins won 10 more games with Harris than they did in '07 with Bartlett? Maybe it's because their OBP was 10 points higher. If they'd have held on to Garza, you'd probably seen them in the WS instead of the Rays. Brendan Harris and all. There's lot's of ways to skin a cat.

Well in 08, he proved that he could not.

No, he proved he could not when coming off an injury. His numbers throughout his whole career, including the minors, says he has decent range.

The Reds horrible defense last year, especially Kepp's was one of the biggest reasons why they lost so many games.

The reason we lost so many games was because our starting pitching was bad and we couldn't get on base. Sure, part of it was the defense, but if that was the major reason, then why did Volquez win 17 games? Didn't he play in front of the same defense? Why did we have a winning record with Hairston in the line-up playing SS?