Thanks Chris. I’ve don’t expect an elite level glove. If he is good with reasonable range that would do for a bit. I was wondering if the Front Office had painted themselves in a corner were they would have to go outside the organization or sacrifice up one of the AA, or lower, Short Stops just to be able to field a guy with 1 aspect of his game that is MLB average or better. Otherwise I cringe at the cost of Crede/Uribe trade towards the end of spring training.. As for the offense well you got to reach the field before you can swing the bat. Call it the ‘07 Crede/Durham/Klesko effect if you will.

Dave, Ochoa's defense is supposed to be good, but no way it's going to be "Omar good" and he could very well hit worse. For what it's worth, he made 2 errors today in the 23-5 drubbing at the hands of the A's.

Thanks for the link to Tango’s site. I am embarrassed to admit I had not run across it before or had failed to book mark it if I did. I hate to go all Cheap Charlie in filling the Omar hole but has anyone seen a credible rough evaluations of Ochoa’s defense at SS? I am all for the Frandsen getting playing time but lets be honest our up the middle defense could very well be comparable to the team’s power out put. I can understand the power guys not being there to be had but defense should be very darn easy to get especially when we are already a light hitting team.

i think they should look at trey webb. he has a rocket arm and may very few errors last year in AA playing short, 2nd, center field, and right field. he got a slow start hitting last year because they tried to change his swing but hit well the last five months of season. during the season last year he was clocked in the bullpen at 96mph. they may try him at pitcher

OGC, Here's the summary from TFB site: A player gets credit (a "plus" number) if he makes a play that at least one other player at his position missed during the season, and he loses credit (a "minus" number) if he misses a play that at least one player made. The size of the credit is directly related to how often players make the play. Each play is looked at individually, and a score is given for each play. Sum up all the plays for each player at his position and you get his total plus/minus for the season. A total plus/minus score near zero means the player is average. A score above zero is above average and a negative score is below average. Adam Everett turned in the highest score we’ve had in four years of using the system with a +43 at shortstop in 2006. That means he made 43 more plays than the average MLB shortstop would make. If Durham was constantly missing balls out of his zone that other 2B's were getting to, he should have been penalized depending on how often they, other 2B's, got to the ball. The system works by comparing all the 2B against each other. The OF defense looks good but man, does the IF look really poor right now, almost Marlins poor, without the ability to hit like the Marlins infield can. Jbrian, Wow, you posted three comments in one day to my site about Trey Webb! Interesting about his arm, because I think if he makes it to the big leagues, it's not going to be as a position player if what you say is true about his arm. He's just never really hit that well in the minors and he looks to me like a utility player.

>> In ‘07, by the Fielding Bible, Durham was a -10, meaning that he made 10 less plays than your average second baseman would have. Though that is on the mark, that's not totally accurate. The way the stat worked, from what I recall, is that for every zone where that position was able to get to 50%+ of the balls in that zone, you get a +1 for every extra ball you get to and -1 for every ball you miss, relative to the average. Thus there are balls in outside zones that the fielder may or may not get to which don't get added to this total. That is, it is possible that Durham got to even less balls in other zones that didn't get tallied up in this -10 score (or, unlikely, more balls if he just happens to move well to a zone that others don't get to). Yeah, SS defense is going to take a hit, I think most people should have got that already, anybody replacing Vizquel is going to result in a hit on defense. Good mention of Vizquel's injury history and comparison with Ozzie. I guess we get to learn how badly pitching depends on defense for good performance in the early going.