Here’s an exercise recommended to me by Tim Bogar, currently the Seattle Mariners’ bench coach: Go through your lineup, look at each player, and list his strengths and limitations.
This is helpful because every big-league player has some strengths (after all, he made it to the big leagues), and every big-league player has some limitations (nobody’s perfect). Such evaluation keeps you from inaccurately categorizing a player with an overly simplistic opinion.
I went through this exercise with the Royals several times back when we started this blog, but I haven’t done it in a while. Now seems like a good time to do it again.