what a game!!!!... reminds of 2004 when the Astros did this to the Expos. We all remember the 36-10 run after that. On a side note Garner needs to get his head examined for even having that waste of skin Gallo warming up in the pen. Seriously, what does Gallo have on Garner. Also I was very gald to see Everett on the bench. His bat would have definately killed the ninth inning rally. Promising outing by Nieve, I just hope Roy and Andy bring it for the Cardinals series. If there is anyway we could take two out of three from the Cards I will feel like we are back in it.
to rephrase my question: Optimist: The astros came back, stayed tough, and fought their way back to victory Pessimist:The pirates blew the win by walking a gazillion guys and weren't helped out by a few cheap hits. The question is, which side are people taking.
A win is a win...any way you can get it. How did Bruntlett look at SS? If Everett and Lane can not hit above .250 they should not be on the field. DD
dam i am so glad we won! i havent had a good day since the last time we won! gosh! anyways this was a must win after the game last nights heart breaker!!
I think Eric Bruntlett is a fine player to have on the roster, but he hasn't hit consistently well in his entire life. Including the minor leagues. At any level. There's no reason to remove Everett's defense for what will be at BEST an EXTREMELY slight improvement offensively.
Bruntlett, never getting regular playing time, almost always pinch hitting, has a career OPS of .742. Everett, getting over six times as many career at-bats as Bruntlett and starting nearly ever game for years, has a career OPS of .661. FYI: If you used Bruntlett's career OPS to rank him among MLB shortstops this year, he'd be the 9th best SS in the NL in terms of hitting, ahead of Rafael Furcal, Jimmy Rollins, and Khalil Greene. Now, imagine if he could get consistent playing time. You're probably talking about one of the 10 best shortstops in the league in terms of hitting. And he's at least average defensively, if not better. Let's face it, running Everett out there everyday instead of Bruntlett is inexcusable when you consider the scoring the droughts this team has.
The danger of using small sample sizes... which don't take into account everyday fatigue, and other teams figuring out a player's weaknesses, once they've seen him enough, and exposing them. Hell... if all you used were those parameters, Mike Lamb would most certainly have garnered enough attention from an AL team looking for a DH, or some NL team in need of a 3B/1B. Bruntlett may be a marginally better hitter than Everett... but we're not keeping a top-10 NL SS on the bench over there. This team has its holes in the lineup... and no matter who plays SS, SS will be one of them. I'd rather focus on tweaking the viable parts of the lineup... namely, finding Burke more playing time at one of the OF spots, and getting Berkman healthy (for good).
On sample sizes, I must disagree. I think everyone knows and accepts that it's much harder to put up good averages as a bench player. I think it's common wisdom that most bench players would improve their numbers (at least slightly) with regular playing time. Here, we have a bench player who already has significantly better averages than the starter. And that starter's numbers have actually been in decline for the past few years. Where's the harm in having them at least split time? What's the point in just giving Everett the position? What has he done to earn that kind of security? Your argument on Lamb is weak as well. Just because Lamb is outperforming Preston Wilson and Jason Lane, that doesn't mean that some other team would be willing to offer great prospects for him. Other teams can see that Lamb's stats this year are a huge jump over his career averages, which means that he's probably just hot right now. Whereas Bruntlett's career averages are consistently better than Everett's, with much less playing time. You say that we're not keeping a top 10 SS on the bench, but how do you know? Clubs lose great players all of the time because there was no room for them on the depth chart. Does the name Abreu ring any bells? FYI: Richard Justice agrees with me in his column today: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/justice/3912375.html
Brunlett's OPS is inflated by his lefty/righty splits. When he pinch hits, he often does do against lefties, where his OPS is far higher (last year when he had the most at bats of his career, it was 0.901 vs 0.447 against righties. He batted 0.125 against righties). Part-time players almost always have higher numbers because they are only used in the situations where they are good.
