He's got the worst arm in our outfield, and RF demands a stronger arm thar CF or LF.

Oh, and the new lineup is stupid. Just ****ing stupid.

The biggest problem isn't the lineup, and if anything needed to be fine tuned it's that Frenchy needed to be dropped to six and Moose needed to be at 5.

The best three hitters on the team are Butler, Hosmer, and Gordon (in that order, though you can make a case for Gordon to be in front of Hosmer). Those three should be in the top three spots in the order:

Gordon
Hosmer
Butler.

Get the most ABs for your best hitters; it's not rocket science.

Get that guy with the .315 OBP at the top of the order as soon as possible!

I might be wrong but wasnt Alice in the 1 spot working out alright?

No, no. The problem is our ****ing lineup, not the joke of a staff that DM has assembled.

Trust "The Process."

I don't want a slap hitting fatass in the 3 or 4 hole, especially when that slap hitting fatass seemingly always strikes out or pops when you need a flyball to score a run.

Not to beat a dead horse or insult you but we have done this "Butler doesn't hit well with RISP" thing before and I the numbers say the opposite.

I guess you can't blame Yost for trying to mix it up. As a manager you can't really say. "Well our pitchers are shit so I'm not going to even **** with the lineup"

He's not a slap hitter. Dude is the best hitter on the team at the moment, sporting an OPS+ of 140.

While the HR is very, very important and we need far more of these, there's more to power than only hitting HRs. Doubles are exponentially more important than singles, just as HRs are exponentially more important than doubles.

In short, Butler is having a solid year.

He's grasping at straws. This is why this franchise has been the place where otherwise sane baseball people have gone to die. No talent does that to people.

What numbers would that be?

The 32 RBI in 72 games?

Byproduct of two guys hitting in front of him with OBPs of .315 and .326, not to mention the complete shit at the bottom of the order (Escobar's last two weeks not withstanding).

Escobar is displaying nearly the same power, with 6 fewer doubles, and a triple in 1 fewer at bat.

He also has only 12 fewer RBI, even though he has far fewer opportunities with the weakest part of the order batting in front of him.

I don't want him the 3 or 4 hole either.

You guys with all these new numbers rely too heavily on these numbers to form an opinion.

Even though numbers are a bigger part of the game of baseball than any other sport, you still have to watch and form your own opinions by what you see.

What I see is a guy that is a good hitter, but that lacks power that he should have, and comes through in critical situations far less than other good hitters I've watched in the past.

Disagree with this completely, in a traditional scouting sense or by the numbers. His approach has been far more solid, up the middle and opposite field, but he's not ever going to be a power guy.

Butler is and should be a player who hits 20-25 HRs per year. Would I like better? Hell yes, but let's not undercut his value unnecessarily.

FYI: Escobar is slugging .318, which is still an embarrassing number at the moment. If he ends up being .250/.325/.375, that would be awesome, given his glove.

Regarding "clutch," I think it's tough to try to evaluate this period, let alone to rely upon anecdotal evidence about players from other eras. I think we tend to remember the good and forget the bad, whereas it's the opposite when you're watching a currently shitty team.