“He’s done a lot of what he needs to do offensively,” said Shildt. “He’s got a really high OPS. Last time, I saw it it was a little over 1.000. Defensively, he’s capable. We’ve seen that. There’s nothing else he really needs to be able to prove. It’s a matter of justifying ... do we bring him up and have him come off the bench?
There was a time not all that long ago when .270 was looked upon as a decent average but not really that much over the mean and certainly not a team-leading mark. In fact, there is no other team in the majors that doesn’t have at least one hitter averaging at least .