****Official Royals @ Rays Game Thread 6/13****

[RockChalk]

Started my first game thread of the season in yesterday's win, so lets make it 2 days in a row.

Santana (4-5, 2.99 ERA) vs Hellickson (4-2, 5.18 ERA)

Kansas City
Gordon
Hosmer
Grown Ass Man
Butler
Cain
Lough
Tejada
Johnson
Escobar

Tampa Bay
...

[duncan_idaho]

Re: positional value...

Saved runs are saved runs. Alex Gordon saves a TON of runs in LF The past two seasons, he has a 3.2 dWAR, which equates to 32 runs saved. He's not quite on the same pace this year (playing with a better CF and fewer teams are running on him, both of which bring his number down a bit), but he still will be close to a full 1.0 dWAR player.

Now, that's all according to Baseball Reference, which has some questions about its dWAR figures, but I think those figures are pretty reasonable.

Positional value is important, but you can still get impactful contributions from non-impact positions.

I like what David Lough adds, but between Dyson's platoon stats vs. LH and the team's stated desire to rest LoCain quite a bit, you're still looking at 2-4 starts a week for Lough.

I think I'd rather see 4 starts a week from Tejada at 3B with a few sprinkled in for Seratelli/Gio/etc. than focusing on getting Lough full-time ABs.

[duncan_idaho]

Also, regarding Dyson's defense...

Both Fangraphs and Baseball Reference's metrics like Dyson's defense quite a bit. Fangraphs actually likes it more than BRef, which is odd.

It's all about his range. There just aren't many guys who can match Dyson's range, even if he does sometimes take bad routes.

His arm isn't Alex Gordon, Jeff Francoeur or even Melky Cabrera good, but it isn't below average according to the metrics.

Gordon/Dyson/Cain will be one of the best defensive outfields in baseball. Tons and tons of range and great coverage to the gaps.