I don’t care how they do it, but Murphy needs to be in the lineup every single day. Offensively, he’s worth more at second base, if he can learn the position. I like Eric Byrnes at LF but the D-Backs don’t want anything to do with Castillo. He would make a good 6 or 7 hitter tho, IMHO, and I love his hustle.

(ok, I forgot I can’t post links. but it’s at the Inside The Book Blog — google it. or email me: skyking162 AT gmail)

I was linked here by a Mets fan a while ago.

FAH, I invite you and anyone else here over to Beyond the Boxscore for some quality discussion of the entire list, including the Mets players. There’s also a link to the best center fielders article and the first base article should be up within the hour.

3. Justin uses THT’s position cla-sifications. I a–umed they went by most innings played, but I’m not sure. Ok — Gomez actually played in more GAMES at third base, but played more innings at second base. THT must go by games played.

As for Lopez, he played for both the Nationals and Cardinals. His overall rating is a combination of the two. Justin lists him twice and I’ve combined the two stints into one listing.

4. My system does not overrate defense. And it’s at this point that I’m going to ask that you read through the methodology articles, because it’s all laid out for you. I’ve already given you an article for linear weights, which is what’s used for offense — my ratings don’t overrate OBP or any other stat, because the proper, park-adjusted rates are used for every single individual event (singles, doubles, GIDPs, CS, HRs, HBP, etc.) Please know what you’re talking about before criticizing.

5. You quoted some RZR numbers for Gomez and Durham. Remember, I’m including OOZ plays and also using STATS’ zone rating, not just RZR (BIS’ zone rating).

6. LoDuca vs. Easley: Lo Duca is a catcher and therefore gets more credit for his position than Easley. In other words, he’s allowed to be worse at the plate because catchers in general hit worse than second basemen.

He also only had 190 plate appearances compared to Easley’s 350. When you’re performing below replacement-level, the extra playing time hurts your value. What would you rather have, a really bad player for 190 PAs plus the rest from someone a bit better or a really bad player for 350 plate appearances plus someone a bit better for the rest? Obviously you’d go with the first, which gives you LoDuca. Had LoDuca been given 200 more PAs and played at the same level, he would have been less productive than Easley.

As for LoDuca’s defense, catchers are rated by SB/CS and preventing PB/WP. Lo Duca allowed only one pa-sed ball. And while an 18/2 SB/CS rate isn’t good, it’s only 18 SB! How much could those hurt? At .17 runs per SB (linear weights, read about it), Lo Duca’s 14 net SBs allowed were worth less than three runs against his team.

10 (or whatever): I’d appreciate if you took back the comments about Justin being careless. Just because you don’t fully understand what’s going on doesn’t mean he’s messed something up. Again, please read the methodology before making a–umptions about it.