There's an article today on cubs.com that talks about the performances of various Cubs players in the winter leagues. Ronny Cedeno grabs the headline as he absolutely tore up the Venezuelan winter league. Which brings me to my point.

Many people seem to think that we currently have a gaping hole at shortstop. They dismiss Cedeno's winter ball numbers because the Venezuelan league is hitter-friendly.

We need to ease up on the panic button here and give Cedeno a chance. During his starting stint at the end of last summer, he played well and put up good numbers at the plate. Regardless of the hitters' advantage in Venezuela, he put up great numbers. All he's done since his call up is hit wherever he's gone. Maybe he won't pan out at shortstop, but the guy has certainly earned his shot. He's hitting .355 in Venezuela, so that should be encouraging. If he was hitting .270, then we should freak out.

As far as hitting in the winter leagues goes, if you think that averages in these are entirely overblown and hitters will fare worse in the regular season, then you better start lobbying to trade Pie RIGHT NOW for ANYTHING (even taking consideration that he played in a different league).

We may not be able to put a lot of stock in Cedeno's numbers in Venezuela, but here's an interesting note: Henry Blanco hit .263 there, 21 points higher than he hit last season. Cedeno hit .300 last year. So if you could assume a spike of about 25-30 point in batting average in Venezuela, then you still project Cedeno as a .300+ hitter (note: obviously, the number of at bats would have to figure into making a real, solid projection, but you can still spot a trend in a simple exercise such as this one).

The other thing people tend to cite to write off Cedeno is that most of his minor league number are lackluster. But if you stop and think about it, there have been a lot of very successful major leaguers who didn't post great numbers in the minors, and likewise, stud minor leaguers don't always become superstars in the bigs (<ahem>Corey!<ahem>). Cedeno could be one of the guys in the former category.

The moral of the story here is that we shouldn't look at SS as a gaping hole, because it's simply not true at this point. Cedeno's played very well and has earned his shot at the position, and it should be his unless he plays his way out of it. But instead of being pessimists about this, we should be excited by how well he's played and be optimistic that he'll really help this team.

As long as we try to build winners by bringing in hired guns, we're going to miss out on the big prize. We're going to have to suplement our lineup with home grown guys, or we're never going to be successful. That's all the more reason to support Cedeno and Murton.