smg58 wrote: It's not always the injuries, so much as who you have to replace them. In the case of Perez and Maine, the replacements have not only been better in general, but have been better than the optimistic expectations for those two. Davis is at least as good as Murphy would have been and is only going to get better. And we've gotten improvements from guys who were here last year too. An up-and-down Reyes still gives us a lot more than we got from shortstop last year. Pagan has been super, and hey, it's nice to see somebody exceed realistic expectations once in a while. His recent starts notwithstanding, this year's Pelfrey is still a big jump ahead of last year's Pelfrey. David Wright has been David Wright again. I think Murphy probably would've put up similar numbers to this point as we've gotten out of 1B (factoring in the Jacobs era), but I definitely have a lot more faith in Davis getting better. Plus, while I thought Murphy would be a decent-good 1bman, you can't underrate what Davis has done there as a natural, lefty, glove. The fill-ins for Maine and Perez have definitely been the key in my opinion. We haven't really had to go deep to guys like Misch and Stoner and what not. I expected more out of Maine and Perez, but not what we've gotten from Dickey and Takahashi, so that's the biggest surprise to me. They're in surprisingly good position considering there have been injuries to CF, 2B, SS, 2-3 pitchers and C.