It was a rather lazy assertion that I did not back up with any sort of evidence, and many readers did not agree with the quantum leap in reasoning I'd made: Michael Saunders + Howie Kendrick + Chris Coghlan = a potential improvement of 0.67 runs per game, which was the distance between the last-in-the-NL Phillies offense and the league average in 2016. To be clear, I meant simply that such an improvement was now within the realm of possibility, where it wasn't a year ago.