Inge versus Jones/Thames

Yesterday, I showed that Miguel Cabrera was not as much of an upgrade over Brandon Inge as it appears on the surface. My calculations revealed that more than half of the offensive upgrade gained by adding Cabrera is eaten up by the downgrade in defense. It made me wonder if maybe Inge should play third base and Cabrera left field. One thing I didn't do yesterday was check to see whether they would be statistically better off with Inge at third and Cabrera in left or with Jacques Jones/Marcus Thames in left and Cabrera at third.

Playing around with the numbers today, I discovered that it really doesn't matter very much which combination you use (Inge/Cabrera or Jones/Thames/Cabrera). I'm not going to post my calculations because Bilfer did the same thing and already and has it on his blog. Our results are almost identical and so are our conclusions. I would suggest putting Inge at third and Cabrera in left and making Jacques Jones the fourth outfielder. Another option would be to make Inge a supersub backing up at third base and the outfield. I think Inge's versatility is too valuable to give up. I would only want to see him traded if they can get a solid reliever in return. If they can't keep both, I would prefer they trade Thames.