You're under the false impression that there will be a competition at all.
Why should there be? Lombo is the inferior player. I'm all for replacing Espinosa with a better player... but certainly not Lombo who is a downgrade at the plate and in the field.
Peopl are blinded by strikeouts. They both get on base at a .315-.317 clip, Espinosa hits for more power and is a much better runner and defender.
Lombo hit .273 this year and Espinosa hit .247... you know how many more hits that is over 100 at-bats? 3.
You really want to replace a superior player with an inferior one over three hits? I don't.
To put it in better prospective, if you give Lombo full time work 600+ PA's... that's a total of 18 extra hits a year... or one extra hit every nine games. Losing a better defender with more power and more speed is not worth one hit every nine games.
You certainly can make the argument that Lombo improves your chances of success in certain situations like when you have to score a run and you have a runner on third with less than two outs... but over the course of a 162 game season, Espinosa is going to help the team more than Lombo possibly can.
By all means improve second base... but Lombo is the opposite of improvement.
