Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Right Fielders of the NL Central

Everyone in Chicago hates Milton Bradley as far as I can tell. This is mostly related to his off-the-field antics, but it is also fueled by his lack of power and RBIs (I’ve often wondered how big of a difference it would have made to the Cubs if they had simply swapped Bradley and Soriano in their order, but my time to play around on the Baseball Musings Lineup Calculator is limited today). And I grant you that Milton has had a bit of a power outage this year, but to everyone in Chicago, it could be worse:

NL Central RFs by VORP

1. Garrett Jones – 23.0 (Pitt)
2. Hunter Pence – 18.7 (Hou)
3. Milton Bradley – 13.6 (Chi)
4. Ryan Ludwick – 10.0 (Stl)
5. Corey Hart – 9.0 (Mil)
6. Wladimir Balentien - -.01 (Cin)

By EqA

1. Garrett Jones - .329
2. Milton Bradley - .286
3. Hunter Pence - .280
4. Corey Hart - .272
5. Ryan Ludwick - .268
6. Jay Bruce - .244

In fact, on behalf of my Brewers, I’ll gladly trade you Corey for Milton, straight up, if you’ll eat some of Milton’s salary. I’ll stick that .400 OBP in front of Braun and Fielder any day. And you’ll love Corey. He’s like an old version of Alfonso Soriano (which is, ironically, the current version of Alfonso Soriano) but with less power. You may even be deceived into thinking he’s a leadoff hitter because of his speed.

Let me or Doug know if you’re interested.