Knew you had something valuable coming. Here it is.
DiPoto's new Moneyball is that you put 4 CF's in the OF mix and live with the 80-90-90-100 OPS+. Take your pick on who is whom. Or on whom is who. Just take your pick.
My first thought was the '82 Cards. Lonnie Smith and Willie McGee, but Hendrick (in RF) was a 20 HR guy. Is that Haniger? And Smith/McGee were both .300 hitter-types. Gamel has a better chance of that than Dyson or Martin. So the '82 Cards don't really compare. They did win a WS without a lot of power....but were 1st in the league in BA and 2nd in OBP.
The '85 Royas had Smith and they won a WS, too. Willie Wilson was in CF but by then Smith was not a CF. And in fact, he wasn't really a good glove OF, even in '82. "Skates" was his nickname, if you remember. With Daryl Motley in RF, their principal OF's OPS+ed 89-98-81, 27 home runs from them...and 3 more from the top two subs.
I"m having a hard time finding a real good team with 3 CF types, and none of them a + offensive performer. There must be one. St. Louis always had a Hendrick or Clark.
BTW, our "monster" IF depends on Segura hitting like he did last year (worthy of consideration) OR Vogelbach fulfilling promise. The 2nd bet is no more of a long shot than the first. But IF that happens and Segura just falls back to 100 OPS+ then we do have that monster IF.
But there's an experimental taste to the OF. Certainly there is a mix and match process at play.
If this is our OF, anyway. I still think we trade Martin. Or heck, maybe now we trade Dyson and a prospect for somebody like JD Martinez?
All of that makes much more conventional sense, as the Cruz/Cano window narrows, anyway.
All in all, I would much prefer a Martinez in RF, with two CF's in CF and LF.
Go Mitch, indeed. 25 HR's from him would go along way towards alleviating my concerns.