Uggla??

[Bartender]

Why not? Placido is aging and we haven't had a big bat at 2nd base in a long time. Maybe we can get Uggla and Hanley in a deal for Santiago, Granderson or Porcello, and 2 or 3 minor leaguer players.

I'd do this in an instant and Florida isn't getting better and there are plenty of pitchers worth taking in free agency this summer and with the draft picks we had this year, we still have up coming pitchers.

money = world series champions

[TSE]

Uggla and Hanley are two much, much better hitters than Everett and Polanco. You can sign me up for being interested in a trade, but depends on the full terms of what their contracts would be and how much we would have to give up. But you are thinking logically by naming 2 guys at SS and 2B that can hit effectively in a way that correlates with scoring, which we need desperately.

If it was up to me, I would be looking to make AT LEAST 3-4 changes to our starting lineup on the offensive side by next season's start. We could easily be the best team of the 2010-2020 decade if our mngmt could just get their ducks in a row and stop taking on massive hitting losses for tiny defensive gains.

I have a saying that is a play off of the common saying that goes something like this...."defense wins championships, but ONLY if you aren't significantly sacrificing hitting in the process".

And in the Tiger's case, Everett / Polanco / Laird / Inge no matter how likable they are as people, they give up too much hitting for the defensive gains. And I know that Inge has done better this year, but for the ENTIRE year he is still too weak, he has a .426 SLG pct this year, that's TERRIBLE for a 3B player. Heck even Uggla and Hanley at 2B and SS can do better than that, at .485 and .535 respectively! Our team can be MUCH better next year with an entirely new infield. I'd clean house of ALL of them by next year if there is a convenient way to do so, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cut Inge or trade him for nothing, I'm hoping I can get something for him that works for helping me rebuild the infield.

Baseball is not rocket science. All you have to do is just spend some time doing the math. If you take Everett for example, and compare him to say Hanley, well look at the numbers of the hitting differentials in AVG or OBP or SLG or whatever you want to use (I use my custom-designed OE%) and then extrapolate what that means for extra bases/runs, and then conversely do the same for the defensive percentage differentials and extrapolate how many bases/runs that saves you. 9 times out of 10, when you have a guy who is a clearly better hitter but lesser of a defender, the differential for how much you lose on the defensive isn't close to making up for the differential you gain on offense. (and I'm not talking about replacing a .390 slugger with a .400 slugger at the expense of defense)

[ajaX82]

^ TSE, i dont think anyone is trying to argue they wouldnt take Hanley over Adam. HanRam is 1,000,000 times the ball player Everett is. It might slightly downgrade the D, but the hitting would of course make up for it.

Im not sure Florida would want Granderson solely for the fact they have Maybin in the system. Aquiring Uggla though is doable, but again, i think the Tigs have really high hopes for Scott Sizemore

[TSE]

^ TSE, i dont think anyone is trying to argue they wouldnt take Hanley over Adam. HanRam is 1,000,000 times the ball player Everett is. It might slightly downgrade the D, but the hitting would of course make up for it.

Im not sure Florida would want Granderson solely for the fact they have Maybin in the system. Aquiring Uggla though is doable, but again, i think the Tigs have really high hopes for Scott Sizemore

Hanley is great, but he's an extreme example, doesn't change the fact that there are dozens of other guys that could upgrade us at SS, just the margin is less obvious with others, but the principle of why we should do it remains the same, as well as for the other 3 guys in the infield that we need to upgrade...Polanco / Inge / Laird (we need to upgrade him as the starter or as the backup, he's not good enough for either spot for this team, and then Avila can be either the #1 or #2 depending on who else we get)

[Bartender]

idk about cleaning out our entire infield.. i think that's a little extreme. Cabs stays at first no matter what and I can deal with Inge at 3rd. I think we need to work in our center infield and corner outfield. I can't stand to see Ordonez have another season like he did this year. He turned to a Polanco type hitter and for 1, that's horrible to see for an outfielder and 2, Polanco is hitting with more power than Ordonez.

Hanley is just the best player in baseball and they were trying to ship him off at the beginning of the season but something happened with Boston and Florida and trade talks died down.

[TSE]

idk about cleaning out our entire infield..

Not the entire infield, everything but first base!

But we have to, those are 4 subpar players if we want to be an elite team. Either enjoy the fun of having 4 likable guys that play mediocre baseball, or replace them with statistically efficient performers that CREATE RUNS at much higher rates and give us a chance to play with the big boys. What we have now is a 53% winning team, which is atrocious considering how well our pitching did this year up until this point. It's lunacy to continue playing baseball like this. I find it to be very annoying and unsatisfying.