Sorry, but I am less and less impressed with Plouffe as a piece moving forward. He's just not that good and he doesn't appear to be getting better with age. Keeping Plouffe at third base pushes Sano to DH, but the plan is to get Mauer more of that DH time. This extra DH time might be what is accounting for Mauer's mini-offensive resurgence. Defensive stats are not perfect, and in a few years StatCast data will make Fangraphs data look primitive, but Fangraphs shows Sano to have really good range. Sano is 6.8 runs above average as measured by RngR, which is second best in the majors. Plouffe is 6.6 runs below average in this stat, which is near the bottom. Plouffe was also in the bottom quartile of third basemen in this stat last year. Plouffe has better hands than Sano, but won't get to nearly the number of balls Sano gets to. Is that a trade off you would accept? http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=3b&stats=fld&lg=all&qual=200&type=1&season=2016&month=0&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=21,d&page=1_30 If we attribute Plouffe's poor fielding this season to injury, then why can't we attribute everybody's poor fielding to injury? Also, what about the other infielders? Just some thoughts.