Farmer1906 said:
Hopefully the choice is not either or. I think the supply of mid tier arms are much more readily available than impact bats.
If we get an impact bat where do you put it?
I think Yordan, Tucker, Altuve, Bregman, & Pena are locks to stay in their roles. We don't need Chas & Yainer to have their roles reduced. They need more if anything. That's 7 guys right there. Abreu & Maldy are not going to be fully phased out. That leaves Dubon, Meyers, & Julks on the bench and potentially Brantley.
I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. The idea of adding a bat sounds great, but like you said, at full strength, we don't have alot of open spots in the lineup. If Brantley returns and shows he can produce, that makes things even tighter.
I don't really want to add another .700-800 OPS guy. We have plenty of those. I guess you can make the case for a lefty to balance out the lineup, platoon, etc. Whatever. Dusty don't care bout that.
If we're going to deal for a bat, I want it to be a clear upgrade over what we've got. Like someone who will be the second/third best hitter in the lineup. I say add the best bat we can, then figure out where to play him. If the best bat available is 3B (for example), then DH him and Yordan goes to full time LF.
The obvious problem is "then figure out where to play him" isn't Dusty's strength.
Anyway. I don't know who the best hitter available is going to be. But assuming we're going to continue down a path to win this year, that's who I want. If we get Yordan back, get Altuve going, get Bregman/Tucker back to their historical levels, and also add a thumper to the middle of the lineup, all of a sudden our prospects this year look alot brighter.