Quote Originally Posted by Southcack77 View Post
I don't see how it is is remotely as important as the hitting, myself.

You could go entire games without there being a chance in LF that would merit a difference between the best and worst defensive LF. As opposed to 4-5 at bats a game.

The stats boys at times will concede this is true, but nonetheless will hammer the defensive numbers again in the next moment.

I certainly do recognize that Kemp passes no eye or metric test as a great defender. If we were talking about a playoff series, I would have some real concerns. But for a team without any real aspirations playing a 162 game schedule? I'll take the hitting because that's going to prove the more valuable asset over a large sample.
It's not as simple as, 'There are more opportunities on offense than defense, so offense is more important and defense doesn't really matter.' It's all about differences relative to other players. You act as though the comparison is between a player making all of his couple plays a game vs. getting a hit in all of his 5 AB. In reality, while an offensive player gets 4 to 5 AB/game, so do the other offensive players. And the difference between a .320 OBP and a .350 OBP, over 600 PA, is...18 times on base. That comes out to a little more than 1 a week. So the difference between a guy who is really good at getting on base and a guy who is about average is about one time on base per week, or one every 33 PA.

So is offense or defense more important for a player? Just depends. Certainly the ceiling for a player's potential value is higher on offense than defense. But Kemp's defense has actually been bad enough, relative to others in the league, to outweigh his offense at times and make him a guy with little to no value.

So is defense remotely as important as offense? It just depends on the player's performance. But you certainly can't say that a guy was not brought in for defense, so the only thing that matter is his offense and so long as it's at least pretty good, he can be as bad as he wants on defense. That's ludicrous.