eckstein on the market. how about 2B?  heh.

1: alluded to in my OP. agreed. i don’t know how much of a factor this might realistically be. i’d like to think that both sides could view it in a business perspective, and i imagine that eckstein has come to realize that his leash isn’t as long as he thought it might be after apparently struggling to find a starting role on any team after leaving the cards and now in the process of getting shuffled. humility could carry him.

2: also mentioned, but like the other poster i agree that a sunk cost is by definition sunk. on a point of trivia it may come down to paying twice for the same position, but kennedy’s checks are effectively cashed; the only task that remains is to field the best team we can given market and budget conditions.

3: i don’t know how much the jays are asking, but i’m sure there are options between free and his remaining contract that you might find agreeable. you never know what they want side – perhaps it’s kelvin jiminez!

4: there’s only one area where i feel ryan is a reasonably trusted commodity, and that’s playing SS against LHP; he’s putting up .227/.281/.319 against RHP for his short ML career. i don’t know where to find historical minor league splits, but i’d be curious to see how bad his differential was down there. defensively he has one (1) minor league game at 2B and 30 in the majors. eckstein hasn’t played 2B for a long time, but he at least has a history of it: 257/263 of his minor league games were at 2B.

5: i would not want eckstein to play shortstop, and presume that an izturis/ryan platoon could provide more wins for the team. in 2007 eckstein ranked near the bottom of the league in RZR. i trust 2B to require less range to be effective, though, and i would expect his errors to decrease as a result of less distance to throw. i think we could both agree that it’s a less defensively demanding position.

as for VORP, i’m not much for BP’s proprietary stats but that one only factors offense. WARP seems to be contested by tangotiger, among others, so i’m even less likely to trust it but it’s one of their attempts at a stat that factors everything. for 2007 eckstein was a VORP/WARP 20.7/3.7, ryan was 8.2/1.6.

I like Schu leading off for us, and don’t see why we’d need to change that.

izturis has a larger career sample: .255/.296/.329 vs RHP and .266/.300/.342 vs LHP. if defensive analysis yields conclusions similar to 2008 RZR data – that ryan is defensively similar to izturis – i would be content to let him play through all of it by himself sans platoon, especially if his minor league splits were to show less weakness to RHP. i’m just going with what i think are the least boat-rocking lineup moves outside of this roster change, and it seems unlikely that they’d tell izturis to stuff it. i could see reduced games after he comes off the DL, though, and it seems like a logical substitution for that context.

quoth the article that started these thoughts, “he has become expendable” and “Because of the glut of middle infielders, the Blue Jays’ asking price for Eckstein isn’t expected to be too high.” i don’t know what the actual price is, of course, but i wouldn’t have even started this chain of thought if i thought it would be anywhere close to the remainder of his full contract year.

i heard from a borderline source that the organization approached eckstein about playing 2B before he reached free agency, and that he refused the reassignment. seems strange given that kennedy had two more years and presumably had no trade value. but even if true, i think eckstein’s perspective might have changed by now.

i don’t believe that anyone can effectively play second base. i think shortstop is a harder position to play that second base, and i think a shortstop would have the easiest transition of all other position players to playing second. as i noted in another post, david eckstein came through the system as a second basemen – virtually all of his minor league games were also played at the position. take those things, add rumors of him playing there in 2008 for various teams, and i think you’ve got an idea that isn’t exactly a reach.

you seem to disagree on defensive, age, and psychological merits – which is fine. i don’t think i’ve suggested anything irrational, though, or suggested that we ask fred bird to play the position.

you’re not the only one.

.299/.373/.405 over 264 AAA 2B ABs is certainly interesting to me. i don’t know the reason we haven’t seen him, but i don’t track the minors outside of numbers. good question to ask someone from futureredbirds.