Who told Jim Hendry that Baker resembled DeRosa?

What’s with the Baker hate? I’ve seen more negative posts about Baker than I ever thought a backup second baseman not named Aaron Miles would ever deserve.

It seems like fans like you are the ones who seem to think he’s supposed to “replace” his holiness. Realistically, Baker is a backup plan for Fontenot’s continued struggles – he’d be a great platoon partner if he can’t put anything together. He plays solid defense, is cheap, and under team control for the foreseeable future.

Of course he doesn’t ride to the field on a unicorn and cure cancer with his surly good looks like Derosa – but those are some large sandals to fill.

Start Fox behind the plate. If he screws up, we’ll see it quickly enough. Lou underestimated his defense at 3B. Maybe the same thing is happening at catcher.

Okay, those who defend Fox’s defense: are you not aware of this thing called “practice”? Why does everyone seem to think the Lou has to play the guy in a game to get a sense of how good or bad his defense is?

Fox was a catcher in the minors but was moved out of the position. Power hitting catchers are a really hard commodity to find, so Fox’s defense must have been amazingly bad for them to give up on him catching. Fox as the emergency catcher (plays there only if the two “real” catchers are out of the game) is fine, but that’s it.

The problem as mentioned above is he is the only other catcher on the roster. This is another is a long line of very strange roster decisions all season. I have been completely baffled by the roster moves this year.

He should get some starts at 3B. I will be VERY surprised if the Cubs don’t pick up a real back up catcher FAST. It is not like they don’t want one. They tried to get Coste ( jeez couldn’t Jim have offered the Phillies A PROSPECT instead of hoping he cleared waivers ?).

I’ll let y’all figure out who in this thread gets to play the roles of Itchy & Scratchy here

But only at 3rd or in DIRE situations at Catcher.

And for the catcher situation, it has to be as a start only.

Tharr, your idea of subbing him in during blowouts is ludacris.

Let’s look at a scenario… k?

We’re losing 11-3 in the third, we’ve already used 1 pinch hitter, and now we sub in Fox. We go through another PH and thenFox goes out in the 6th with a random injury, possibly from not playing catcher enough. Now we HAVE to put in someone. At this point, what would you do.

Cause I’ll tell ya right now, every “expert” will tell ya you don’t sub in your 2nd catcher midway through the game unless you at least have one other person that play catcher at Fox’s level (which ain’t pretty). Who else do we have that can play catcher, noone.

I’m with ya on more Fox AB’s, but subbing him in during a game at catcher is a terrible idea.

But you say that Fox is completely qualified to fill in for Ramirez?

If Ramirez qualified at 3b this year, he’d be the top 4th in ZR in the MLB

If Fox qualified at 3b this year, he’d be the 5th worst in ZR in the MLB

This means that if you look at his small sample size as gold, which you’ve done this entire fanpost… than you have to see that Fox’s defense isn’t “average” as you said earlier. It’s bad. We were told by your most hated foe, the experts, that he was a bad defender in the minors. He comes to the majors, you say he’s average, but actual statistics show that so far, he’s bad.

Another point that you haven’t even examined with the Catcher situation is the pitching staff. How much more has Hill examined tape on opposing pitchers? How much more has Hill talked to the pitchers to see what they like to throw in certain situations? How much more has Hill seen what a pitcher can and can’t throw or when they need to be settled?

We aren’t just talking about defense if we put Fox in at catcher, we’re talking about messing with our entire pitching staff. We have the 6th best ERA and 3rd best BA against in the majors, let’s throw in a guy who just met most of our pitchers a month ago?

It just doesn’t make sense.

(These stats brought to you by ESPN)