A few hours ago I wrote a hurried post in response to Shannon Drayer’s tweet saying that Jose Lopez was at third base and Chone Figgins at second for the first infield drills of Seattle Mariners Spring Training.  Now that we know a little more about the situation and the initial news has marinated, let’s explore this some more.

As speculated, this is still just an experiment.  The team is weighing their options.  Jose Lopez told Geoff Baker that he’s willing to give it a shot, but if he doesn’t like third base he’s going to let Don Wakamatsu know.  As you may remember, Lopez was very vocal about his frustration over the temporary move to first base.  But as Dave notes, Seattle could have easily avoided all the fuss by trying this a little later on a back field, making it all the more curious.

In Baker’s post Lopez sounds like a guy who understands the potential benefit, but is understandably skeptical.  He notes that he has the stronger arm and that Figgins is more rangy.  Indeed, if you had both players and neither of whom had any baseball experience, you would instinctively put Lopez at third base and Figgins at second.

Which alignment is better?

As I said in the other post, I can’t be convinced that Seattle would be better off defensively by swapping the two players.  Figgins last played second base semi-regularly as a 27 year old.  He has much more experience at third base and even the outfield.  At 32 years old, he’s facing potentially moving to a position where he has relatively little experience.  He may be rangier than Lopez and have an arm better suited for the position, but the inexperience on top of any physical decline since he last played the position could make for marginal improvements.  Meanwhile, as noted, Lopez will almost certainly have an adjustment period where struggles with hard short hops, gets bad jumps on nubbers up the line or making the long throw.

In a best case scenario, I would think that Lopez is just as good at third as he was at second and that Figgins is a step down but still pretty solid from where he was at third.  Is a slight improvement up the middle worth taking the entire infield defense down a notch?  I say no.

And what of Dustin Ackley?

The Ackley element popped into my head as I was driving home, and before I got a chance to finish this followup Dave (linked above) brought it up as well.  You can see why I hurried to get that initial post up.  No one wants to regurgitate ideas, and in a blogosphere with so many quality sites it’s tough to come up with original content sometimes.  Anyways…

Figgins is signed through 2013 and Ackley is next in line for the second base gig.  Whether or not Lopez is traded before his contract expires Figgins would be moving back to third base to make room for Ackley at second (assuming that experiment is going well, and according to the reports we’ve seen it is).  Figgins is a versatile guy and I’m sure he’s a team player, but bumping him back and forth will hurt his defense and could frustrate him a bit at this point in his career.

Lopez still on the trade block?

One thought I had was that Seattle could move Lopez to third with the idea that it would be easier to integrate their high minors depth into that position rather than second should they decide to trade Lopez in a scenario where (say) the back of the rotation is scuffling and in need of reinforcements and a contender has just lost their starting second baseman to injury.  If Matt Tuiasosopo or Carlos Triunfel were doing well in the minors they would slot in better to third base than second base.

But why not just wait to move Figgins across?  Moving midseason is annoying, but not a back breaker.  It was a nice thought at first, but I find it hard to believe that Tui and Triunfel could be additional motivation for this move.

And should Lopez start the year at third, what does that do to his trade value?  I’d assume it hurts it.  Seattle moving Lopez to third implies that they don’t think he can handle second base, which is clearly not the case at this point in his career.  And even to an idiot team a bat like Lopez’s profiles much nicer at second base than at third base.  So, if this situation stuck, it might become harder to move Lopez in the future (if the team even wants to do that, though I suspect they would).

Now, if they use him at third base in Spring Training before sticking him at second for the season, that wouldn’t hurt nearly as much, and could actually boost his trade value as a great hitting utility man down the stretch.

Of course, the chances of Seattle finding a trade that makes losing Lopez’s offense midseason worth it are slim, unless that pitcher is legit (say Robinson Cano breaks his leg and the Yankees offer Phil Hughes, or something).  Still, it’s an interesting sub plot.

Final thoughts

It is certainly strange that Seattle would try this on the very first day of Spring Training.  I think they’re going to give it a real shot, making this the biggest Spring Training story for Seattle so far this spring.  Much more interesting than the battle for the back of the rotation of last bullpen spot, at least.

I’m not a fan of the potential swap– at least not at this early point– so I hope they both return to their 2009 positions and store the experience gained in this experiment for weird situations where the infield gets shifted around.

If the M’s do indeed go this route I won’t be too upset, of course.  The change won’t make the infield much worse and has an outside shot at being just as solid as we originally thought.  But it will take time to figure that out, and I like knowing that the defense is going to be really good rather than waiting to find out if it might be really good and more balanced.