Defense at SS

[theClaw]

I totally missed on Morel...haven't even seen him. I can pair a guy like that with a righty weighted slugger for a total of 4mil or less. Love Espinoza, used him on my second team but he is harder and harder to grab in the draft.

[Danlovaj]

Right now, I love Marcus Thames and Carlos Beltran as platoon DH. Can't beat having a ballpark HR at 7 roll on Thames, and he favors RHP, so should get plenty of ABs. Does decent for OBP vs. RHP too.
Beltran is just killing it too vs. LHP.
I tend to play in hitters park, US Cell and Yankee Stadium for 2010, so it favors these guys. 2.49 mil for Thames and 1.18 for Beltran. Another manager in this league has Thome as DH vs. RHP only, and Thames is doing far and beyond Thome at 9+ mil. So great value here.

I have Thames in 3other leagues, and of the one completed season so far, he hit 30 HR in 369 ABs. And that was using him just vs. RHP.

I'll have to look at those two Espinosa and Morel.

Thames and Beltran
http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=324098

Thome
http://fantasygames.sportingnews.com/stratomatic/team/team_other.html?user_id=323717

[Danlovaj]

Looking at Espinosa and Morel now.

I still like Thames and Beltran. Granted they are for DH spot though. I agree with Espinosa and Morel as great Defense. But Espinosa lacks OBP. In one league, he finished at 0.098 BA! But 23 some HR's. At least Thames and Beltran give you some OBP.

I've tried platooning another ballpark HR at 7 roll, Andruw Jones vs. LHP, but at 4+ mil salary, is just too much to use up for a platoon LHP batter, as the number of ABs is usually not sufficient to grant such a salary. Unless your division is stocked with LHP's of course.

Another guy I love at 3.70 mil, is 2B Neil Walker. He is just tearing it up for me in all the teams he is in. The only neg is he is defense rated 3, but his offense so far is offsetting that for me. I see some managers use 4 rated middle infield and try to offset the poor defense with better slugging.

There is some argument for this strategy I feel, especially as good slugging defensive middle infield are few to come by lately.