Good. I'm sick of this. Yes, Mike Fontenot has a terrible arm for a shortstop. Yes, Emmanuel Burriss has little durability, a weak bat, and his defense at shortstop is mediocre at best. And Mark DeRosa, of course, doesn't profile well at shortstop, not to mention the impact his wrist injury probably had on his power.
But who cares? I think I can live with a backup shortstop with a weak arm. People love to bring up age: and guess what? Miguel Tejada is going to be turning 37 next year. Does that mean that, suddenly, after playing 150+ games in 11 of the past 12 seasons, he will incur a plethora of injuries that will limit him to 60 games this year? There's no evidence to support that. He's been consistently durable throughout his career.
And in the event that Tejada becomes injured to the point where the Giants might actually need a backup shortstop to start more than 12 games, the Giants can go out and execute a trade for a shortstop, or pick one of these free agent shortstops up (it's possible that many of them won't receive contracts). In reality though, these backup shortstop options (Orlando Cabrera?! Bobby Crosby?!) are really not going to be much better than Mike Fontenot.
Please do me a favor, and stop throwing names out there like Bobby Crosby, who has managed to compile -1.3 WAR in 167 games over the past two seasons. He's just Burriss with less speed, and a little more pop in his bat.
