Jonathan recently wrote an excellent article comparing La Stella to Mark Lemke and favorably contrasting him against the trio of Bret Boone, Marcus Giles, and Dan Uggla. I must disagree with the Lemke comparison. Lemke couldn't hit a lick, yet he was the Andrelton of second basemen. Bill James ranked Lemke as one of the best defensive second basemen of all time in his book Win Shares. While La Stella seems serviceable defensively, he certainly is not a defensive wizard. But he's probably a much better hitter than Lemke was.
I think a better comparison (perhaps a bit optimistic) is Martin Prado. Prado is not a great defensive 2B, but he is an elite contact guy. Prado hits tons of line drives, never strikes out, and rarely walks. I think you could easily find those three traits on every La Stella scouting report ever written. Martin has never cracked 15 homers in the majors but has hit copious amounts of doubles. The power is not there yet for La Stella, but I think in time those line drives will turn into extra base hits. Even if they don't, he still has already proven to be a significant upgrade over what the Braves had been using.
Two other thoughts: First, I don't like how Fredi Gonzalez keeps double switching late in games to remove La Stella in favor of Pena. I'm not certain Pena is really an upgrade over La Stella, and if the Bravos are going to remove a defender for defensive reasons, it should be Chris Johnson. Second, I am not a fan of the clustering of La Stella and Andrelton in the lineup. This lineup strikes out a ton except for Andrelton and Tommy, so I would think it would make more sense to space them out to avoid an inning-killing strikeout spree. It's not like we haven't seen those innings many times this year already or anything.
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