Prospectus Hit & Run: Up The Middlemen

It's a timeworn adage that a ballclub must be strong up the middle to win a championship. Spend a few minutes on Google and you'll find decades worth of grizzled baseball men expounding upon the virtues of having above-average players at catcher, second base, shortstop, and center field. A few years ago, Bill James wrote that the importance of strength up the middle was "[p]erhaps the first lick of old baseball wisdom that I ever encountered."

Baseball Prospectus