just based on watching games, harris seems like a very good 3B to me and only slightly below average in the middle infield. he appears to have good hands and an excellent arm, though below average range. i would be shocked if crede could play SS or 2B as well. harris isn't quick, but he's quicker and more athletic than crede.

what do your defensive stats say?

and crede has an 87 point advantage in career SLG%. crede and harris also have the exact same career wOBA with buscher ~15 points less. also wrt to harris having the best career stats thats debatable, he and crede are almost identical. i'm not saying crede is far and away the best hitter (like i said in an earlier post i think it's a pretty close race) but i just think you guys are underrating him...go look at the twin's fangraphs page and you'll see crede leading those two in almost every significant hitting category

when you factor in defense crede is the clear winner, buscher is horrible at 3B and harris isn't much better

i agree with your comment about signing crede fwiw, i wasn't too happy when i heard we signed him (although he has been worth what we paid for him so far this year) because i thought buscher and harris would make a decent platoon

it's very possible that i'm underrating crede on defense. i've seen him field maybe 12 balls in my life. i guess it seems like he has a pretty quick release while harris has a pretty slow one.

still, i'm going to say that against most pitchers, either buscher or harris should be expected to hit better than crede. but yeah, as a whole, against the set of all pitchers, he's as good as the other two or slightly better

i don't know what wOBA is. what is it?

crede has been one of the top fielding 3B over the past few years using the plus/minus runs saved metric as well as UZR...i don't have plus/minus info for harris at 3B but his UZR/150 is pretty bad at 3B (total is -10.9 compared to crede's 9.8)

http://www.insidethebook.com/woba.shtml

fangraphs.com has a good collection of sabr stats, here is the twins team page http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?...n=2009&month=0

so it's basically a runs created/pa stat, right? if so, yeah, makes sense. crede has been a better hitter over his career than buscher, it's true. obviously, we have a very small sample size for buscher. i think he's better than his career stats but i don't have any evidence and don't expect anyone to believe me. i also bet his career stats against RHPs are probably as good as crede's.

what is up with delmon young's swing? it is among the ugliest i've seen in mlb. i know some people have had success with the charlie lau approach (which i think is ugly) but delmon has, like, a charlie lau inside-out golf swing or something. he rotates vertically but doesn't roll his wrists. i don't know what that's supposed to do, but no one else does it, and intuitively it seems like it would be a hard way to try to hit. it's as if he swings in such a way that if he hits a line drive the only possible place it can go is RC field. any ball he hits to LF almost has to have topspin. i don't know. i don't get it.

here's the youtube from when he threw the bat in the minors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCX_XlRYYDo
he doesn't actually swing, but he almost does. look at how his rotation is setting up to be more horizontal like a normal hitter. it looks like he's capable of hitting a line drive or ball with backspin to LF.

well i was at the game

drunk

yelled at a 12 year old for being a red sox fan

i hope he cries himself to sleep tonight and forever. who the fuc cheers for a team other than the twins?

Crede's defense has been pretty elite this year by pretty much any metric I think. That and his much needed power makes him pretty valuable. Butcher - er sorry, Buscher's defense is massively tilting to watch as I think he's the only player in MLB that's still afraid of the ball. He has a decent bat but I don't think he can play anywhere other than first base (which is taken obviously).

I think Bert just said, in a roundabout way, David Ortiz was on steroids and now the cause of his struggles is that he is off steroids.

Crede = THUG LIFE

Every fielding metric I've seen agrees that Crede is an elite third basemen. The only other people playing third and doing it in his league have been Feliz/Inge/Beltre. He was even better than Punto by every metric I've seen for 2006.

UZR says he has been +16runs/150 games since the beginning of '06 (+11/150 for his career).

Harris has been about -10/150 at short and -6/150 at 2nd. Although it isn't a big enough sample size to matter, he has done even worse in his short time at third so it definitely can't be used to help his case.

Crede's range would surely be a limiting factor for him at SS or 2B, but getting to the ball isn't even half the battle. He has good instincts, a great glove, a quick release and a very strong and accurate arm.

Wow, sick start for Beckett, striking out 4 straight very good lefties.

Walking Delmon Young pretty much negates that though...

HR, BB,BB

Umpire's got a minuscule strike zone this afternoon, for both pitchers.

What do the fielding metrics say re: Tolbert v Harris at 2nd? We know what Gardy thinks of their hitting skills, as Harris hits 2 spots above Tolbert in the order, and yet he's Tolbert's backup at 2nd evidently.

Span = holla @ defense imo

home plate umpire is horrible. Both catchers ejected. Both mgrs ejected. Gardy's worst nightmare comes true, losing the DH. He's on the horn right now to the front office "I need 3 catchers!!1!!!" Butcher is our 3rd string C iirc. Justin probably 4th as he caught when he was young.

Beckett should have been tossed.

Seriously, **** this ump. I knew from that horrendous first inning ball four call to Drew that something was going to go down eventually. This inning has been a circus.

eh, i think getting to the ball is at least half the battle at SS. that is, the difference between the best MLB SS and the worst at making the routine play is smaller than the difference between the best and worst at making the "range play".

it's hard for me to trust the stats with regard to harris and buscher at 3B. just by watching i think you can tell that harris is much, much better defensively than buscher. the stats say that harris is almost as bad (yeah, sample size, right? but still).

harris has:
-much better hands
-a much stronger arm
-better mobility
-better effort

buscher might have a slightly quicker release but that can't possibly make up for everything else.

i wish the details of uzr were available. like game logs. here are the balls that were hit in player X's zones in game Y and this is what happened. it would make it easier to find where the stat succeeds and fails.

I'm sure Harris is better than Buscher, I was only talking about Harris and Crede.

Sorry, my point was that the ability to make a "range play" was only partially related to speed. Having a good glove helps, good reactions help, a good transfer/release helps and having a strong/accurate arm is huge. Crede is pretty slow, but is good/great at all of those other things. Harris is a little faster, but isn't as good at any of them imo.

i'd be surprised if crede has a significantly stronger arm than harris - harris throws very hard - but point taken. i'm still going to guess harris is the better SS but i could be wrong.

tolbert's UZR/150 is a lol bad -23.4 although it's a very small sample (only 230 innings) while harris is -6.6 for his career (~1000 innings)...have harris start at 2B and let crede and buscher platoon at 3B imo

Harris is also a much better hitter than Tolbert.