I got a real laugh out of Baseball Weekly. This week's issue had an article 
about the Indians and one of the sidebars talked about personnel and what 
*may* be their lineup in 1998, if they lose Lofton and gain Ivan Rodriguez. 
What made me laugh wasn't Rodriguez but this:
Even if they chose not to replace Lofton via trade or free agency, they could 
plug in a player already on their roster, Chad Curtis, and the sum of the 
parts would be similar to what the Indians have now.
It's laughable to think that they can find the kind of players in the market 
to make up for the loss of Lofton. There's a BIG difference between Lofton 
and Curtis and the ONLY person who could replace him would be a YOUNG Rickey 
Henderson. Going into last season, Curtis was .268, .344 and .395 for BA, OBP 
and SLG and he put up .263, .346 and .393 in those categories. Lofton was 
.312, .381 and .427 before the season and put up .317, .372 and .446 for the 
season. Curtis is a career 67.1% base stealer (and has been at 64.2 and 61.5 
over the past two years) while Lofton is 82.1% for his career (78.2 and 81.5 
over the past two years). The loss of Lofton would impact the Indians as much 
as the loss/reduced effectiveness of Henderson hurt the Yankees and A's.
You can sign all the big-time sluggers in the world and not make up for the 
gap that will be created by the loss of Lofton.
--- TrekEd 1.00
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