Who will be the Red Sox shortstop at the end of 2011?

Watching Jose Iglesias this Spring makes you wonder who exactly will be manning he shortstop position at the end 2011.

You can make a reasonable case for any of the three potential candidates. For Marco Scutaro, Jed Lowrie and Jose Iglesias, the number of events that can occur between now and then are unmeasurable.

On October 5th, 2011:

– If Scutaro was the starter, Lowrie was the utility and Iglesias was in Pawtucket, would you be surprised?

– If Lowrie stole the job by May 1 and blossomed, would you be surprised? If Lowrie was on the DL by May 1, would you be surprised?

– If Iglesias was called up in September and lit the world on fire, thus supplanting the incumbent, maybe you might be a little surprised. The variables go on and on.

So in this week’s FireBrand Reader’s Poll we are asking, (over to the right of the page).

“Who will be the Red Sox shortstop at the end of 2011?”
— March 5th weekly poll

And if it’s someone other than those three let us know in the comments section.

As far as our last poll was concerned:

In what looked like might be an early poll battle for top 2011 WAR in Boston between Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, became a runaway for the new Red Sox first baseman.

Here are the results:
– Adrian Gonzalez (2010 WAR – 5.3) (40%)
– Carl Crawford (2010 WAR – 6.9) (23%)
– Kevin Youkilis (2010 WAR – 4.4) (20%)
– Jon Lester (2010 WAR – 5.6) (13%)
– Other (4%)
– John Lackey(2010 WAR – 4.0) (0%)

*John Lackey received just one vote.

In the FireBrand comments section, Stan wrote:

My vote is for Adrian Gonzalez at 6.5. He had 6.3 bWAR last year at Petco last year. I think any lineup-related regression in his walk rate will be balanced out by the ballpark (less OBP, more SLG).

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Hard to argue with that. My only reason for voting Crawford is just the familiarity that Crawford has with the circuit and he also posted a near-7 WAR last year. I would give it to Gonzo in the long run, but Crawford for this year.

Now if Youk and Pedey want to thrust their way into the discussion, that’s fine with me. Youkilis could certainly post a plus-7 WAR if he could stay on the field and accumulate ~675 plate appearances.

But the readers have spoken and Gonzalez was the winner in last week’s poll — by a good margin. We’ll have to bookmark this one for fun and see if maybe John Lackey can prove us all wrong.

For a quick primer on WAR: Click Here