OK, the curious conclusion of my morning study of Duffy's defensive superiority, as documented in the two posts and comment threads, below, is this. As far as their value to the team goes, Chris Duffy is more valuable right now than Mike Gonzalez. By quite a bit, too.
I think we can lose the closer and really only be down a seventh-inning bullpen guy, because the whole bullpen is prepared for promotion with little to no drop in quality. Torres can close fine. Grabow and Marte can be your lefties.
Parting with Duffy does look a bad idea. He does not hit much, but his defense and his speed appear to compensate for that pretty well. He's not an All-Star, but the Pirates lack depth at centerfield and that gives Duffy job security. Moreover, possible replacements like Ryan Church, who plays center as well as Ben Grieve played left, look, if you credit Duffy's superior defense as the equivalent of one robbed double per week, much less likely to be improvement over Duffy.
I would look for Chris Duffy on the bobblehead menu in 2007. He's not going anywhere. Littlefield's man-love for Duffy is real, we already know that, and it actually looks not totally irrational to me.
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