Oops, thanks. That’s obviously what I meant. The idea of a pitcher hitting himself in the face with a pitch doesn’t make much sense.

It hasn’t. I wasn’t sure when that season was starting. Thanks.

For 3B, you need arm and reaction time. For 2B, it’s more about quickness and footwork.

In general, 2B is harder than 3B. You can tell by comparing the league offensive baselines for both positions – NL 2Bs this year hit .271/.331/.408, and NL 3Bs hit .265/.335/.441. In general, the more glove a position requires, the lower its offensive baseline will be.

Way back in the old days, the average 3B was a better glove than the average 2B. It was largely a function of the frequency of bunts, which required a good 3B defender to handle, and the two positions flipped right around the ’30s as bunting-for-hits started to leave the game.

DeWitt hasn’t hit all that well so far in the playoffs (.211/.200/.421). He didn’t hit all that well in the regular season, either (.264/.344/.383). And unlike LaRoche, DeWitt has never hit particularly well in the minors, either. The best thing that can be said about his forward projection is that he’s young and has some tools – but he is by no means a sure bet to develop into a starter, much less a star.

Watching LaRoche struggle may have been frustrating, but he has much, much more native ability, and if he’s able to tap into it, then in two years we won’t really care how he was hitting in 2008.

I’ll be very disappointed if Chavez stays on the roster this fall. Good-field, no-hit catchers like him are a dime a dozen, as shown by the fact that the Pirates were able to get him on a minor league contract. I’d remove him from the roster and try to sign him to another minor league deal, especially since he’s eligible for arbitration. If he won’t agree to that, I’d just look for somebody else like him to provide depth at AAA. In another year Lerud may be able to provide that depth.

They need a backup with more offensive upside anyway, because Doumit is a key to the team’s offense but he’s going to miss time at some point. They can’t afford the dropoff, so they need to take a chance on somebody with more potential offensively than Chavez. That probably means going with Diaz or hoping Paulino can get himself straightened out. I don’t think they have any faith left in Paulino, but he has no value in trade and no remaining options. Diaz has at least one option left. I’d prefer to see one or the other as the backup next year. I’m not exactly excited about either, but they both have the ability to hit more than Chavez types.

He’s a 3B. Always has been, and always will be, until he gets too old for it and moves to 1B/DH. When he spent a handful of games there this year, it was an emergency thing because the Dodgers had burned through a bunch of MIFs, with Furcal and Nomar being hurt.

He’s a mid-term solution at 3B, and they really don’t need to be thinking any further ahead than that at this point. They’ll stick him there for now, and then re-evaluate in two years or so, once Walker has shown whether he’ll develop with the bat, and Alvarez has shown what he can and can’t do on defense.

I think that DeWitt’s future, such as it is, will be as a bench bat. He’d have a better shot on a team that doesn’t have Colletti at the helm, since he generally prefers to buy veterans to fill an open position when possible.