About two weeks ago, the Atlanta Baseball Club traded second baseman Tommy La Stella away to the Chicago Cubs for a small collection of international bonus slots and also right-hander Arodys Vizcaino. The move provided clues as to Atlanta’s dollar valuation of the aforementioned bonus slots relative to baseball’s free-agent market. What else it did was to create a vacancy at second base — a vacancy that prospect Jose Peraza is expected to fill eventually but also not immediately. None of the other options on Atlanta’s 40-man roster — Phil Gosselin, Ramiro Pena, Tyler Pastornicky, nor Elmer Reyes –are projected to produce a 1.0 WAR or greater per 550 plate appearances in 2015.

Atlanta went some way, it seems, to addressing their second-base depth earlier this week by signing former Yankees prospect Corban Joseph to a minor-league deal — and Joseph, it seems, is basically Tommy La Stella.

Consider, their projections for 2015, pro-rated to 550 plate appearances:

Name Age Pos PA BB% K% HR AVG OBP SLG wRC+ Off Def WAR Corban Joseph 26 “2B” 550 7.8% 14.3% 13 .258 .320 .399 101 0.4 -0.5 1.9 Tommy La Stella 26 “2B” 550 9.2% 10.3% 5 .273 .343 .366 99 -1.9 -2.1 1.4

Like La Stella, Joseph enters his age-26 season. Like La Stella, his second-base defense is probably some combination of below-average but passable. And even though they profile differently in terms of walk-strikeout differential (where La Stella is better) and home-run power (where Joseph is), both are candidates to produce league-average batting lines — and candidates to do so, it should be noted, somewhat contrary to expectations.