Outfielders since May 1st, and Yadi for good measure:

      G  AB  R  H  2B  3B  HR  RBI  BB  K   BA  OBP  SLG
Juan 34 139 14 39   8   3   6    7   6 21 .281 .308 .511
Jim  26  92 12 26   4   0   2   16  15 14 .283 .373 .391
John 17  74 12 21   4   0   0    5   6 15 .284 .337 .338
Yadi 24  90  8 24   6   0   2   14  10  3 .267 .356 .400

So, uh, Yadier–would you mind hitting sort of like that over the rest of the season? And maybe the next ten years? That would be great. I was never on the J-Rod-should-start/Encarnacion-should-be-sent-to-a-work-camp bandwagon, so I can’t really jump off of it, but this puts me much more firmly on the free-John-Gall-and-platoon-him-with-Dr.-Nickname bandwagon. I mean, I knew J-Rod was wanting for power at the moment, but those are Quilvio Veras numbers. And not even the good Quilvio Veras numbers! (Juan’s putting up Alfonso-Soriano-in-Texas numbers, while Edmonds is Yankees Chuck Knoblauch without the speed. It’s not good when you can compare each outfielder to a second baseman.)

Of course, there’s another way of dealing with the outfield problem, and if MLBRumors is at all accurate on this report… well, wow. Another prime example of Jock selling high on a prospect in exchange for a player alienated by the hometown crowd and victimized by circumstance as of late. (Were he GM of some other team at the moment I think he’d be looking at Isringhausen and Encarnacion.) Now, there’s one problem: this trade makes absolutely no sense from the perspective of the Mets, unless Omar Minaya is suffering from some as-yet-undiagnosed dementia. Diaz isn’t a great player, but he’s young, he’s cheap, he’s got a career major league OPS over .800, and most importantly he isn’t a minor league closer who relies on a strange delivery and a low-90s fastball. I like Worrell–he’s pitched much better than recent minor league closers like Gene Stechschulte and Scotty Layfield–but the Cardinals would make out like bandits in this deal.

According to Matthew Leach’s latest, it seems that So So Def has a leg up on Bigbieguez for the starting left fielder spot. Does this make any sense to anybody?

First of all–wait. Before I go any further… why was I not told that So Taguchi had an official website? I mean, I know I can’t read it or anything, but that’s just awesome. I eagerly await “Simontacchipundit.” Anyway, the picture on your right is from said website. Seriously. Apparently, eerie homoerotic caricatures are a big part of Japanese baseball.

Okay, yeah, where was I… first, and most obvious, Taguchi has never hit well enough to be an above-average left fielder. If he was really a Gold Glove centerfielder back in Japan, his .277/.333/.387 career mark there was relatively valuable. But even if you give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s improved as a hitter (despite being on the wrong end of 30 and playing in a stronger league), his career Majors OPS of .751 is mediocre at best. Give him ten runs above the average left fielder on defense–and I might, because the guy has a cannon for an arm–and he’s still no better than average. In fact, even the much-maligned Larry Bigbie outhit him when last he was healthy, and he did it over a full season.

Second, Rodriguez and Bigbie are pretty redundant if they’re both bench players; both are lefties with borderline bats. Rodriguez might be a slightly better hitter, and Bigbie’s a better fielder, but it doesn’t make sense to throw two southpaw corner outfielders on the same bench when you have the prototypical 4th outfielder–suspect bat, range for center, good speed–sucking up at bats in the starting lineup.

I doubt any of them is going to get 500 at-bats this year, especially with La Russa’s love of messing with the lineup, but it just doesn’t make any sense; Tony seems to want to reward Taguchi for what he did last year, but the fact remains that what he did last year wasn’t enough out of a corner outfielder. Bigbie and Rodriguez still both have a shot at putting up impressive–or at least adequate–offensive totals, so why not give them the chance?

But that’s not the worst bit of news that Leach breaks:

In each case, there’s a favorite — but not a prohibitive favorite. …and Junior Spivey is a mild front-runner over Deivi Cruz, Hector Luna and Aaron Miles at the keystone corner. But that’s all subject to change.

So help me God, if Deivi Cruz–the Deivi Cruz that was rated as as many as fifty runs below average on defense, who has posted an OBP over .300 exactly three times in his nine year career–if DEIVI CRUZ wins the second base job over two–maybe even three–players who are his superiors in every way, I will be left with no choice but to stop following baseball forever. Get Up, Baby! will be converted to a site about infant exercise methods, and I will be a broken man. There shouldn’t even be a competition here; Spivey is, by far, the best candidate the Cardinals have. Unless every single defensive metric has Cruz pegged wrong, he rivals Neifi Perez as one of the most hopeless long-term major leaguers of all time. [Note: Cruz does not have his own official website, but I will publish any caricatures sent my way.]