You've been arguing for several pages that defense is as vaulable as offense.
My point is that defense is not even close to as vaulable as offense.
Uggla's offensive production factors in to WAR. OPS is one of the better measures of offense in baseball. We can break down by other numbers, but the fact remains that Uggla's offense is better than Espinosa's.
Espinosa has not ranked in the top 5 of UZR or DRS ever. He has not won a gold glove. He is not elite by any measure. He is very good. Frankly, I consider top 3 (top 10%) to be the measure of elite. Top 5 is being generous.
Show me the quote where I said defense is as valuable as offense.
OPS is NOT one of the better measures of offense in baseball and that is why it doesn't factor into WAR. OPS assumes that slugging is just as valuable as getting on base. In reality on base is 1.8x more valuable. That is a HUGE discrepancy and it greatly inflates the offensive value of a player like Uggla who doesn't get on base enough but hits for power when he does get his hits. A better metric is wOBA. Dan Uggla had a .325 wOBA in 2012 compared to Espinosa's .313. The reason the WAR totals were so close was that Uggla had a VERY good defensive season in 2012. His UZR was 4.2 compared to 7.5 for Espinosa (if you include Espi's time at SS last year the number balloons to 12.9 which is actually the better measure because it all factors in to WAR). So as you can see the ever-so-marginal offensive edge Uggla enjoyed was factored in much more highly than the much larger defensive edge Espinosa enjoyed and at the end of the day Espinosa was worth .1 win more than Uggla.
Espinosa played a lot of 2012 at SS. If you add in the UZR from both he would be top 5. If you don't want to, that's fine because it is two different positions. Honestly I'm not going to argue about him being an elite defender. If you don't consider him one, that's fine and you can make a case. I do but it's not relevant to the discussion.
