A double a week

For half a year, I've been impressed with my own logic as more or less described in the previous post. I will concede that Duffy over McLouth in center amounts to one play, or one and a quarter plays, per week. Most of these plays are probably robbed singles, but some are surely extra-base hits. I will call it a double a week.

I now see how that might be a huge difference.

Defense and offense are two sides of the same thing for me, so it should be easy, I thought over breakfast, to put that double per six games into perspective. Taking away a double is the same thing as hitting a double, I say. If one guy flies out and later takes away a double, and the other guy hits a double but then fails to catch a fly ball that falls for a double, then it's a wash. They are equivalent players.

So if you add one double per six games to Duffy's offensive numbers, then you have some hitting stats that you could use to compare him to McLouth. Duffy has played 123 games or about 21 weeks of ball for the Pirates. If we add 21 doubles to his numbers, he has 39 in 440 at-bats. This would raise his batting average to .327 and his slugging percentage to .459. His career OBP would slide up to about .375.

This means, only for the sake of comparing Duffy's career numbers against McLouth's career numbers to evaluate their probable contribution over the 2007 season, I'd use Duffy's defense to justify regarding him as the equivalent of a player with McLouth's defensive skills and a .327 / .375 / .459 hitting line.

That's much better than McLouth.

Wow.

The problem here is not so much that Duffy is too great to trade, but that the Pirates have no depth in centerfield. Because the team is bad, then, they cannot afford to make a trade to make the team better.

Ouch.

They need someone with the defensive skills of Eric Byrnes or Willy Taveras--not as spectacular as Duffy, but not so bad that a defensive adjustment makes Duffy look like a Kearns or a Damon at the plate. Seeing that I have to throw out such names to suggest adequate replacements, I better understand why centerfielders are regarded as such hot commodities. There are not many people who can play centerfield well.

I did not expect to ever say this, but I think I am beginning to feel the man-crush on Chris Duffy that has evidently so infected the Pirates' organization.

That's what I get for interrupting my comfortable routine, so recently established, of mimosa-flavored Pirates ennui.