Salisbury: On the block? Amaro Talks Up Ibanez at GM Meetings

I didn’t bury Raul…

“I think we can count on the same kind of production he had last year, perhaps a little bit better,” Amaro said of Ibanez. “He takes care of himself extremely well. He’s in great shape. He has the body of a 25 year old.

“He had a slow start [in 2010] and I talked to our trainers about it a lot. I think coming back from surgery had a toll on his start overall. He was moving much better physically in the outfield at the end of last year, his bat looked quicker, his legs looked stronger. Overall, he didn’t have the kind of year that he’d like to have had, but there was pretty significant production there from the middle of the season when he started to turn it on, until the end of the season.

“He was still a pretty productive player and when you look at his numbers, they’re not all that different from Jayson’s last year. What did he have, 83 RBIs? Jayson had 85. He didn’t have as many opportunities as Jayson did to drive in runs. Clearly Jayson had more runs scored and his on-base percentage and stuff were better, but [Ibanez] had 37 doubles and five triples. The difference in their production was not all that great.”

145 OPS+ Werth
112 OPS+ Raul