Pod's or Hairston?

[qwerty]

Pierzynski or Alex Sanchez.

 

Ya, they would have a shot at it. Man, if sanchez could ever learn how to take a f***ing walk. He would be one of the very best lead-off hitters in the game. He has ridiculous speed ( not that good of a base stealer) and was on pace for breaking the all time bunts for hits record last year until he got hurt. He also knows how to hit the ball to all fields which is always a nice thing.

[soxmalone21]

Are you kidding me? This isn't a tough question, or a stumper question. I would take Pods over Hairston anyday. anyways Hairston didn't play the whole season. Who asks this question anyways? This isn't tough to figure out.

[Punch and Judy Garland]

Hey Malone, do you have a bette way to kill time before spring training? If we can't have meaningless arguments, the winter seems too long. Also, you are still a little new here so you would have missed the dozens of offseason threads where a contingent of people wanted Jerry Hairston sent here in a trade.

[beck72]

But the scenario that someone (was it me?) created earlier was that these two players -- your .290/.430 guy and your .375/.385 guy -- had within five homers of each other, and an OPS within .020 points or so of each other.

 

Of course, if the .375 guy is knocking in 30 more runs than the other guy, and hitting 20 more homers, I'll definitely take him.

 

But I put them on an equal plane as far as driving in runs/x-tra base hits/homers.

 

But a guy with a avg. 80 points higher will be driving in a lot more runs than the lower avg. guy. Unless the rest of the team is garbage and no one is ever on base when he hits, you have a guy who's getting a hit 37.5% of the time he goes to the plate, opposed to the guy getting a hit 29% of the time. All things being equal, the guy with the better avg. should get more RBI opportunities with the hits [be they singles, doubles or more]. The guy w/ the high OBP may be getting on base. But he can't drive other people in with his walks, and you don't know if anyone's driving him in. [of course bat the guy with the high obp before the high avg. guy and he'll knock him in ]

 

I think a team needs both high avg and obp guys. Yet w/ the extra hits, the high avg. guy is prob. driving in more runs. And I know which guy I would want hitting late in a game, in an RBI situation: the guy with the better chance and proven success of getting a hit

[YASNY]

Stolen bases OVERRATED???  How can you think this?  Speed is an extremely intimidating asset for a player to possess.  If you don't think so then why is something like this possible? http://florida.marlins.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/...layer_id=334393 (the video from 7/20/04).

 

Guys like Ichiro, Pierre, and Pods force infielders to rush their throws which result in errors.  Pitchers have stolen bases in the back of their minds when these guys are on the basepaths.  I said it before and I'll say it again: speed is a tremendous asset for a player to possess.

 

You just spent these two paragraphs trying to convince me that speed is great. I totally agree with that. Speed is a wonderful, intimidating weapon. Speed kills. But, the stolen base, in and of itself, is overrated.

[Harry Chappas]

You just spent these two paragraphs trying to convince me that speed is great.  I totally agree with that.  Speed is a wonderful, intimidating weapon.  Speed kills.  But, the stolen base, in and of itself, is overrated.

 

Rickey Henderson, Frank Thomas and Ichiro are the answers to this whole argument.

 

OBP for Frank Thomas or Barry Bonds is overrated because of the chances they will do something greater than draw a walk, they also are not going to steal a base and as Maggs showed us can be easily doubled up on grounders. These OBP guys do not change the pitchers approach and therefore are very overrated.

 

Rickey Henderson hit .220 at the end of his career but had an OBP of close to .400. Pitchers needed to change the way they worked the next hitter, (i.e. more fastballs,) because of the threat of the steal. The hitter behind them had the advantage. I do not know of a measurable stat to look at the advantage to a player hitting behind the run threat.

 

Ichiro is the final example. He has a great average but with an OBP that is not what it should be. He also has speed and has the best bat control in all of baseball. At the end of the day his OBP is a nonissue.

 

OBP can be used to make average players help their team do great things as well has make great players become more ordinary in certain cases. Either way the defense is on guard when speed is in the box and that player has teh ability to use that speed to affect the defense (unlike Willie Harris.)

[BaseballNick]

You just spent these two paragraphs trying to convince me that speed is great.  I totally agree with that.  Speed is a wonderful, intimidating weapon.  Speed kills.  But, the stolen base, in and of itself, is overrated.

 

 

You are entitled to your opinion but I know for a fact KW and Ozzie share my opinion on SBs. If that weren't the case, KW wouldn't be turning our Sox into the Marlins of 2 years ago. I personally think they are invaluable; however, speed and SBs commonly aren't valued as much as they once were. Hopefully, we will go out and show everyone just how valuable speed and SBs can still be.