Wade Davis Promoted, Will Make Major League Debut Sunday

And I wanted to hear peoples reasoning on it. I curious with how people view Upton.

Clearly you don’t know enough to make a valuation. Fair enough.

My point is if we are going to compare players defensively, say for trade purposes, then we need to compare apples to apples. The same reason you park adjust and everything else. You need to adjust based upon positioning. Maddon would have Ellsbury play just as shallow as Upton (eg our backup CFers play shallow). What would his defense be under this alignment?

They do not play shallow. How would their UZRs be impacted if they played where Upton played?

I’m not saying BJ is playing in the wrong spot. I am saying he is playing in the right spot.

What I am saying is that there may be centerfielders out there playing in the wrong spot. They may be playing deeper than what they should. My point is very clear. If we are going to compare defense, then it needs to be apples to apples. Looking at a players defensive value when they play deep CF will NOT give us the best indication of how they will play if they were used like we do in Tampa. We have to adjust their numbers to reflect the shallow play.

For example if Player X is a 6 defender playing deep CF on an NL team and Upton is a 10 defender playing shallow CF on the Rays then what would they be if they were normalized? People here say “Upton is a 10 d and player x is a 6 so Upton is better”. I’m saying we have to adjust Player X to a new value if he played shallow or Upton to if he played deep. Then we’d be comparing apples to apples.

Maddon seems to play all center fielders shallow. So it stands to reason if we acquired a new one he would play shallow as well. BJ obviously plays an elite defensive CF.

So you are saying playing shallow is beneficial on a case by case basis. Which CFers in the league would you say would benefit by playing as shallow as BJ?

What you are essentially saying is if Evan Longoria gets hurt in spring training next year that we shouldn’t take that into account projecting his 2010 performance? We both know that is absurd.