Channeling The Dogfather :

via cache.gawker.com

Channeling Jeff Sullivan:

Also, some UZR defense numbers:

Oakland is +6 so far this year, which is nice, but the Angels are an incredible +24 runs.  What's remarkable is that while Oakland was projected to be this good (+12 if you weight the projection by actual playing time), the Angels were not (-2).  The Angels are playing out-of-their-mind defense right now.

Ellis handily leads all 2B at +28 runs/150 games.  Jack Cust is at -28 in LF, Crosby is at -21, Buck is at +34 in a very small sample.

It's getting impossible to overstate just how underrated Ellis is.  Think about it this way: if the current defensive numbers hold up (which they won't), there would be a 6 win difference between Ellis and Cust in terms of defense.  Throw is some regression and call it a 4 win difference.

Cust has 35 runs created so far this year; Ellis is at 27.  If we pro-rate that for the rest of the year, those numbers are 90 and 70, which implies a 2-win advantage for Cust.

When all is said and done, it is likely that Ellis will have been a more valuable player at the end of the year than Jack Cust, assuming that Cust's lead feet and glove keep running out to left field.