If your goal is to finish 81-81 then I suppose you could aim to put league average players everywhere on the diamond. If you aspire higher (ooh that rhymes...wait, nobody cares, myself included), it doesn’t mean you have to find above average players everywhere. You can succeed with some excellent players and some who are merely in that 50th percentile on which above/below average is judged.
So when I discuss a 3B option that is utterly average it is neither to heap praise nor criticism. It is merely to note, with a touch of astonishment, how incredibly “league average” one player appears to be — and he’s available on the free agent market.