[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Willie Randolph is worth MUCH more as a second baseman as opposed to his contemporaries than Mattingly was as a first baseman compared to his. If Mattingly is easier to replace, than Randolph is obviously the better value. If Mattingly's whole career was like those 6 years it would be a different story, but unless your name is Koufax 6 years ain't enough to get you into the hall. Mattingly was barely a replacement level player the remainder of his career.

I'm not some kid (I'm sneaking up on 50) who thinks metrics are the only thing that counts. However there are baseball people a lot smarter than me who have certainly demonstrated that you ignore them at your peril if you want to win baseball games.

That being said you don't have to go deep into esoteric stats to understand that the value of Randolph's career is greater than that of Mattingly's. Randolph helped his team for almost the entirety of an 18 year career. Mattingly was a dead average producer at 1b except for that 6 year peak

We belong to two groups who will just never agree on these things, so I guess I'll give up too. After I snarkily point out that I have lots of company in the front offices of major league baseball teams that win.