Hitters Recap July 27- August 2

Last week, Mike Fontenot beat out Reed Johnson to take the hitters' MVP of the week.  This week, it was a power explosion with six players with an OPS over 1.000, and even Ryan Theriot getting extra-base hits.  Kosuke Fukudome, too, got into the power party posting a SLG higher than the overall OPSes of both Mark DeRosa and Derrek Lee.

D. Lee 34 PA, .207/.294/.345, 3 R, 7 RBI, 26 Outs (2 DP)

R. Theriot 31 PA, .269/.323/.462, 4 R, 3 RBI, 22 Outs (2 DP, CS)

A. Soriano 34 PA, .414/.471/.793, 9 R, 6 RBI, 18 Outs (DP)

M. DeRosa 27 PA, .238/.370/.238, 4 R, 4 RBI, 17 Outs

A. Ramirez 33 PA, .385/.515/.615, 5 R, 3 RBI, 16 Outs

K. Fukudome 25 PA, .348/.400/.652, 4 R, 4 RBI, 15 Outs

G. Soto 20 PA, .316/.350/.368, 1 R, 2 RBI, 13 Outs

H. Blanco 9 PA, .222/.222/.333, 2 R, 0 RBI, 8 Outs (DP)

R. Cedeno 10 PA, .400/.400/.400, 2 R, 1 RBI, 8 Outs (2 DP)

R. Johnson 14 PA, .462/.500/.538, 2 R, 1 RBI, 8 Outs (DP, CS)

J. Edmonds 12 PA, .222/.417/.889, 4 R, 5 RBI, 7 Outs

M. Fontenot 11 PA, .444/.545/.667, 2 R, 5 RBI, 5 Outs

D. Ward, 4 PA, .000/.250/.000, 1 R, 0 RBI, 3 Outs

Last week every one was upset about the offense slumping.  Well, it's not slumping.  Nearly everyone came out of it all at once, with only Derrek Lee posting an overall bad line for his position.  And much of this was against a likely playoff team.  Enjoy it.

I thought Ronny Cedeno had a good chance of being traded.  There is much carping against Cedeno here, but people fail to recognize how valuable he is considering the way most SSs are hitting in the post-A-Rod SS world.  Among SSs with at least 100 ABs, Ronny is 15th in OBP (Ryan Theriot is 3rd).  Only 5 have OBPs considerably higher than Cedeno's.  And considering that some of these "shortstops" are Jerry Hairston, Mike Aviles, Alberto Callaspo, and Emmanuel Burriss (if you said "Who?" to the last three - I say, "Exactly.") that means that Ronny Cedeno, especially given his defense, is better by one important measurement than the starting shortstops on over half of ML teams.  His overall hitting line is comparable to Derek Jeter's and better than Orlando Cabrera's.  If Orlando Cabrera is worth a year of Jon Garland, then what is Ronny Cedeno worth?  Of course, among the 15-30 SSs with worse OBPs than Ronny, there are guys like Jhonny Peralta offering much more SLG, but Cedeno is also just 25 and has shown flashes of power in his career.  This off-season, Ronny Cedeno may be the best SS available for teams in the market.

So, this is my suggested discussion point for this week - if you were in the SS market this offseason, there's obviously Rafael Furcal, but let's assume he re-signs with LA for the sake of argument.  Who else would you rather get for your team than Ronny Cedeno?