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<font size="3" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Let me rephrase that.Quote:
Originally posted by Alex:
Crank, there is no other position but catcher for Martinez. He won't be a DH and he won't play first.
Besides catcher, the only other logical position for Martinez is third base.
By whose sense of logic? Funny thing is I have yet to read anything about the Indians moving Martinez to third. So it's not going to happen.
And what a dank, dead, fish stinking mode our executives are in. A funk with no daylight.
If Vic Martinez can hit over .300 and be an average third baseman, we win, and we win big.
How about some offense? As well as our prospects did last year, I'd love to field a .330 hitting Bradley, a .315 hitting Martinez, a rock solid .280 Gerut, a .280 Crisp, a .275 Lawton, and a second baseman who can hit 60 extra bases, aka Casey Blake.
A rock solid nucleus that can actually score runs.
Uh how about some defense?
You know when you move a player to a new position he kinda needs to actually play the position....
You keep saying - offense this, offense that, and thats all well and good.
But what about the defense Alex?
Our defense gave up the most unearned runs in the league last year. Apparently a large part of that was our pitchers making wild throws to first and suddenly 4 more unearned runs would score before the inning was over.
You may be putting the cart before the horse in regards to Vic Martinez. If you think back on all of our prospects from the 90's, they ALL COULD HIT! Thome made tons of errors at third but we kept him because HE COULD HIT. Manny Ramirez, need I say more?
Albert Belle, Carlos Baerga....this was the core of our team, and none of them fielded anywhere near as well as they could hit. We hung with them until they became adequate defensively because they could hit and proved they could hit before they proved they could field.
My point is Vic Martinez needs to hit everyday, and to force Bard into a very minor role on our team to make that happen is the wrong approach.
Blake drove in runs in LESS THAN 40 games last year, even though he played in over 150 games!!!
There is no way you can call that kind of offensive production acceptable for a corner position. Blake, however, at second base would definitely be in the top 3-5 in the A.L. regarding offense. Heck, certainly Blake is as mobile as Ricky G, with much more pop in his bat than Ricky G. Blake runs the bases well and scored a decent amount of runs, just what you expect from a second baseman.
Agreed Martinez needs to hit every day. And he is going to do that by rotating between catcher, first, and DH....not playing out of position at third.
Lawton DH's, Ludwick, Hafner and Broussard play first. There is no room at the inn.
Even with that scenario, Crisp will either not play or will have to platoon with Escobar.
Not all of them will play every day.....
Not enough right handed bats on this team - I can see Martinez as a right handed platoon at either first (if Ludwick does not make it) or DH, with Bard catching....
Plenty of ABs to go around....
So, even with the absence of right handed hitting, and Martinez hits right handed, you STILL think playing him everyday at third would not work.
Uh yeah. He has never played the postion.