Eckstein's played SS throughout his minor league career and all of his 4 years (iirc) in the bigs. He's heady, experienced, and has learned how to compensate for his fundamental shortcomings as a SS. Are you willing, on a team with the World Series in it's sights, to let Burke learn on the job? How many jumpshots do you need to watch Shaq shoot before you have enough sampling to see that Shaq is a *fundamentally unsound* jumpshooter?
Has anybody checked out the new ESPN power rankings? Astros are 5th. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/powerranking?season=2006&week=5 I think they should be 3rd, but hey that's just my South Coast bias I guess.
No, it's just another example of how he's just a fill-in as far as SS is concerned, and that is what folks are pointing out. But thanks for blowing it out of proportion anyway. I don't understand why so many act like that is a far-fetched opinion when the Astros' brass have been saying as much for several years now.
If Burke's natural position is second base he should be a serviceable SS. His weakness at SS is his arm. When he's in left his arm is an even bigger liability because he's not going to gun anyone down at the plate. Bruntlett's defense at SS from what I've seen is on par with AE.
Yeah he does seem to get bad breaks on the ball kind of like Willy T did last year. His footwork should improve with the added playing time. He's swinging a hot bat and besides Willy T, he's one of the few guys on the roster that can steal a base.
2B and SS are worlds apart skillwise. Would Biggio have been a "serviceable" SS? Why then did he play 2B while the Stros auditioned a slew of average to below average SS's (Rafael Ramirez, Yelding, O.Miller, Cedeno, Listach, Gutierrez, Bogar, Lugo)? His arm's not his only problem, btw. The whole point I've been trying (apparently unsuccesfully) to make is that the only position where Burke can be a very successful MLB *regular starter* is 2B. On the Astros, *as they're currently constructed and with the team goal they're striving for*, he's a tremendously valuable spot starter & utility guy at 2B, LF and SS. It's not fair to Burke to hype him as something he's not.
Apparently Big Puma was something Lance came up with, at least from what I've understood. He either didn't like fat elvis or wanted a new nick or something. Either way, Big Puma rox.
I go between Fat Elvis and Flapjack, with the occasional Twinkie thrown in. My wife and I had the Dbacks' fans around us cracking up at all our nicknames for the players. Most weren't funny, just laughing that we had a different name for each player-Bidge, Willy T., Fat Elvis/Flapjack, MoBerg, P-Dub, Penny Lane, Bradley and Yoda.
Why do we have to be ranked first? If you just want them to rank them by standings, just look at the Standings chart. The point of the power rankings is to subjectively look at the teams and rank them based on the author's perception. That's why Cinci (almost the same record as us) is far lower and Cleveland is extremely high.
Or because some of the other teams have played stronger opponents? Or because the White Sox were better than us last year, added some good talent, and haven't shown any more signs of slowing down than the Astros have?
