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Ike Davis and his 2012 Valley Fever Affected Season = Carlos Guillen and his TB Affected Season, IMO.
I expect Ike to have a really good year next year. As I said before, when we drafted Zunino it put us in an awkward position with Montero. He's been terrible offensively at DH, but crushes it as a catcher. He's not good at Safeco, as can be expected from a righty, but we need SOME righties. Smoak was the righty lynchpin in this offense, and without him we're incredibly susceptible to lefty pitchers, who also btw KILL IT at Safeco. Of course, if you look at our lefty-righty splits they were basically even this year, which is terrifying for how left-handed our lineup is, but still.
We can't put 9 lefties in the lineup. Montero's one of our only righties worth much at the plate, but he's not hitting like a first baseman. He's hitting like a good-hitting future catcher, expecially since he's been bad at DH. If he can't catch, he's not worth nearly as much currently.
Would I trade Montero + an arm for Davis? Yes - based on Zunino + Jaso at catcher, I feel we sort of have to. It would slot Carp or Smoak in at DH, but with DH having been an awful position for us this year that's not a bad thing to stick a 1B bat there either.
We need a RH outfielder then, though, because Ryan and Guti can't be the only righties in the lineup.
Trade for Montero for Davis, sign Swisher (switch-hitter), promote Zunino and go to war with that lineup? Ackley / Gutierrez / Davis / Swisher / Seager / Zunino / Saunders / Wells / Ryan against lefties, with Carp and Jaso stepping in against righties? It doesn't look like a world-beating lineup, but it has potential.
One of these years potential offense has to turn into actual offense, right?
If we don't trade Montero for a 1B then it looks like Montero needs to become at least a part-time 1B. Zunino's not gonna get moved off catcher that easily, and for all his awesomeness this year we're still using Jaso basically as a platoon player. I assume we're hoping playing in the field more will let Montero post more .840 OPS marks like he has as a catcher instead of the .580 hairball he's coughing up as a DH.
We can stall Zunino in AAA for a bit to let the Jaso/Montero thing play out longer. We don't have to rush Mike. But if Zunino really is a Posey-level bat, how long do we keep him in the minors because of positional congestion?
We need to figure out what to do about Montero within the year. It'd be great if he'd make it easy on us and become a monster-hitting 1B/DH, but if he doesn't...that's trouble. Especially given what we paid for him. If he can't catch for us then I would trade him as a catcher while he still has that value.
~G