Bat Kouzmanoff 9th

Not to you, who I agree with regarding Kouzmanoff’s bad offense.

and they say Kouzmanoff is a plus defender. Yeah, he’s not a good hitter. There is more to being a good baseball player than hitting, these qualities are just harder to quantify. It’s much easier to look at somebody that’s hitting .300/.400/.500 and say, “He’s hitting the cover off the ball,” than it is to look at his fielding percentage and say, “Nothing gets past him.”

And Jeff Baisley is pretty bad.

And in regards to his defense, is it possible that he’s having two plus years defensively, in what will be an otherwise awful career defensively? Yes, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been worth those runs this year, and last year, and the year before that. It’s just as feasible it took him a couple years to adjust to playing an MLB-level 3B. Players improve. He just turned 29, it’s not like he’s doing this in the twilight of his career.

He has very mediocre arm strength. A truly weird way of throwing, though it is quite accurate.

Is that all you’ve got?

If you aren’t looking at the stats, Kouzmanoff isn’t really a wow-defender. I would bet pitchers care more about how many runs their team scores for them, but that’s just my opinion. There are other reasons why the A’s shouldn’t platoon Kouzmanoff, like the $5Mish they’d have to pay him this year. Still, Cardenas’ stats are quite a bit better against RHP so it’s a thought. Platooning him at 2B with Rosales is a cost-saving idea, too.