"My mission is to be the ray of hope, the guy who stands out there on that beautiful field and owns up to his mistakes and lets people know it's never completely hopeless, no matter how bad it seems at the time. I have a platform and a message, and now I go to bed at night, sober and happy, praying I can be a good messenger." -Josh Hamilton
Phillips plays solid D in the middle of the diamond and is a very good baserunner. Dunn is weak in leftfield both in terms of range and arm. He is an average baserunner at best. Then, if you want to evaluate them as future assets, Dunn is older, has had a knee operation and has a body type that's unlikely to age well. Phillips is younger and has had no injuries.
If it's me throwing the $$$ around, and it can only go to one or the other, it goes to Phillips.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
Dunn beat Phillips in Win Shares last year 21-18. Phillips leads 4-3 this year. It's fairly close. For the record, I like Dunn plenty and would like him to stay with the Reds, but I place a higher value on a multi-faceted middle IF. I actually think they complement each other nicely. I only wish the Reds had more appealing options like those two to put into "who's better" debates. The real answer is they're different and valuable.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
Yep, and both bring facets to the game that don't have to be viewed as separate alien entities in a world that consists of only predestined incidents and solutions.The real answer is they're different and valuable.
Both cause the other team to have to react to their game and that is the beauty of having both types of players on your team, because it hopefully will thin the options down as the game progresses.
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
Some people loose the forest through the secondary-average trees.
Agreed there. Yet one problem Baker has at the moment is he's really only got two top-four hitters at his disposal (at least against RHPs) - Dunn and Votto. That neither hit in the top four is an indictment of his lineups, but it means that two non-ideal hitters would need to be in that mix even if he better deployed Dunn and Votto. My take is, with this roster, Brandon Phillips needs to be one of those two other guys.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
I was going to suggest that EE isn't too far off at all from being neck and neck with Phillips in terms of overall importance/value to this team.
The top 4 by career numbers, as posted earlier.
I think he's clearly top 4 vR on the Reds as of today, and you were inclined to remove Junior, you likely could replace him with Bruce. Freel was 5th.Code:BA OBP SLG OPS 1 Griffey .297 .386 .570 .956 2 Dunn .251 .389 .535 .925 3 Votto .298 .344 .574 .919 4 Encarnacion .272 .336 .456 .792
That said, until Dusty gets it out of his head that speed is characteristic #1 for a leadoff guy, we'll never get the right guys up there.
Here's a top 5 that even Dusty should be able to stomach, but I still doubt we'll see on any regular basis thanks to his lefty-right obsession.
Freel
Votto
Grifffey
Dunn
EE
Games are won on run differential -- scoring more than your opponent. Runs are runs, scored or prevented they all count the same. Worry about scoring more and allowing fewer, not which positions contribute to which side of the equation or how "consistent" you are at your current level of performance.
I'm not a system player. I am a system.
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