Imagine you are Dick Williams and need to fill left field with someone for the 2017 season. You’ve already slotted Jesse Winker into the right field hole, and while Ryan Ludwick could be coaxed out of retirement, you want to try something with a positive chance at success. You want the decision made sooner rather than later, so you ask some aide who looks vaguely like Jonah Hill to mock up some player comparisons of your two best in-house options. After about an hour, the aide–we’ll call him Paul–returns with a mock up.
You, the savvy General Manager you are, see these numbers and are confounded.