There was a key phrase above that set off my spidey sense ... "out of zone plays". I'm pretty sure it was Matt who noted that LAST YEAR, when the Ms defense was putrid, that the club was leading a parade of OOZ excellence. When looking at HOME TEAM, the thought was that this "might" be an indication of ridiculously poor positioning of otherwise good defenders. If the theory is good enough for us ... why not Hudson? Maybe, just maybe, Z and company have tapped into OOZ being a 'tell' of positional mismanagement ... (and given the results for Seattle in 2009, I'm thinking the current club is da bomb with positional defense).
Yes, Jack likes defense. And, yes, he went and got a speedy guy for CF. But, he played half the season with a middle infield combo of (from the mass concensus), Laurel and Hardy, (and we ain't talkin' J.J. here). Part of the entire push behind dumping Lopez is that his defense isn't up to snuff. He played for the BEST DEFENSE IN BASEBALL, at the highest traffic position in baseball -- and had a DP partner who was considered even worse.
SOMETHING has gotta give. Given the evidence from 2009, (the best defense in all of baseball), one of these things *HAS* to be true. Either Lopez is a much better fielder than he's given credit for -- OR -- the quality of middle infield defense is irrelevant to having a great team defense -- OR -- the quality of INDIVIDUAL defensive athleticism is largely irrelevant to the question of producing outstanding defensive results.
The good Doc has been skeptical of how "great" Gutierrez is defensively all season. Yet, the club went from 26th to 1st in defense.
None of this is meant to be a recommendation for Hudson. It is just that so many people continue to use individual defensive metrics as evidence, when the truth is we understand so little about defense that doing so is a fool's errand.
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