Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Rios Not In Lineup Tonight

Pods in center, Dye in left, Q in right. Thome will DH. I don't understand why bring him here and not let him play. I would hope that this is just a way to let him get acclimated and not rush him, but he needs to play. He's too good of a player to let waste away on the bench.

Now that I've had a day to digest, I think the odd man out most days needs to be either Podsednik or Thome. You can't bench Quentin and you can't bench Dye. They are too good. Maybe the occasional day off, but Rios needs to be in there a lot, and I don't think we should be giving up Quentin and Dye AB's.

3 comments:

  1. Why would you want to sit Thome. Thome is a better hitter than Rios and hits Left Handers and Right Handers better. I mean I understand giving Thome days off for rest but other than that his bat should be in the lineup.

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  2. Thome is getting very old. It would get either Q or Dye out of the outfield, and it would give us better defense with Rios in center and Pods in left or right. We are a poor defensive team, this could help.

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  3. Thanks for your reply Ken. I guess I will just respectfully disagree.

    It doesn't matter how old you are when you lead the team in OBP and are tied for the lead in Slugging Percentage. He also is virtually tied for the team lead in HR's despite having 100 less AB's than either Konerko or Dye.

    You could argue that he has a relatively low average but then I would argue back that he makes up for the relatively low average with the amount of walks he draws.

    If you were to say he strikes out too much I would tell you that 77 of his 101 strike outs have come when no one was on base or when there were runners on base with 2 outs so it doesn't really matter how he is making those outs.

    I mean your argument about improving the defense is valid, but not at the expense of getting rid of your most effective hitter in the lineup. He is batting cleanup for a reason.

    I just get tired of Thome not getting credit for the kind of player he is. He can still hit and August and September are historically his best months.

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