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| Why play Desi Relaford? |
| 07.17.04 (8:13 am) [edit] |
This team is going nowhere. We have a 23 year old 3B/OF prospect named Jose Bautista sitting on our roster who was rated as the 7th best prospect in the Pirates system last year. He isn't going to get any better by sitting on the bench and his only shot to make a dent in this team is this year because I suspect that Teahen will make the club out of ST last year. But instead of giving him a chance we are starting Desi Relaford? Desi of the .549 OPS? Desi, in the last year of his 2 year contract with K.C.? Desi of the 900K salary that is basically down to 400 and should be DFA'd. Desi Relaford serves no purpose on this roster. He's not going to be part of this team next year and we have young players who need time. He can't play in the OF. We have to showcase Stairs for a trade, and play Ruben Mateo, Dee Brown, and David Dejesus. 2nd base is occupied by Tony Graffanino who will be a royal next year and will probably tutor Ruben Gotay at some point. Desi is one guy that we need to simply let go. Along with Pinch runner Damien Jackson, and Alberto Castillo. I'd call up Scott Walter from Wichita, he's been hitting well as a catcher at AA. What is better than one young catcher? Try two. Let he and Buck alternate. It may take some of the pressure off the kid as right now he is the Man behind the plate and really, people are looking at him as the return on the Beltran deal until Teahen comes up and Wood gets a few more starts.
Option Justin Huisman to Omaha and call up Jorge Vazquez from Wichita. Since a very rocky start, Vazquez has been dominant and Huisman has been awful. Start watching Denny Bautista's starts very closely. He is absolutely scorching Wichita right now and could deserve a shot when Brian Anderson implodes and is found to be untradeable at the deadline.
As for Mike Sweeney, I don't believe that anybody wants to trade for somebody owed 30+ million dollars over the next 3 years with a bad back and defensive liabilities. I think we are stuck with him and have to hope that he goes all Sean Casey on the world when he gets to full health.
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| Why haven't I been blogging? |
| 07.17.04 (7:57 am) [edit] |
Work, Work, Work.. Class, Class, Class..
Last weekend I went down to Camden Yards to catch the Royals-O's series before the All-star break. I saw Darrell May shut out the O's while I laughed hysterically from the upper deck. Then on Saturday I saw what appeared to be Miguel Asencio but turned out to be Daniel Cabrera, a rookie starter for the O's who is having a nice season despite basically a 1:1 K:BB ratio. Here is his line:
83.2 IP
66 H
6 HR
38 BB
41 K
3.01 ERA
His Batting Average against is a fairly lucky .221. He has good stuff with a lively fastball and a nice curve. But his control is lacking and even against the Royals he lived on a lot of hard hit balls going right to his defense. If he can continue to keep the ball in the park and have guys like Tejada playing defense behind him than he should be an above average 3.80-4.30 ERA major league starter for a long time.
Opposing Cabrera was one of the dice rolls from the Beltran deal, Mike Wood, who turned up snake eyes for this start. I liked some aspects of the kid, I didn't like others. His changeup is very, very good. His sinking fastball sets the tone for all his starts but the O's repeatedly got absolutely awful hacks whenever he threw his change. When they did make contact it went nowhere as their timing was so off.
The second thing I like about Wood is that he refuses to give in and walk hitters, even when that means throwing it over the plate to get killed. His control is very solid and he lost out on a lot of borderline calls that forced him to give up solid hits when down in the count. But this is not a guy who is going to be beaten by walks and 3 run homers.
What don't I like about Wood? His fastball velocity is basically about as good as Darrell May's. He does throw a sinker so at least he gets an asterisk behind it.
Secondly, his breaking stuff didn't really make an appearance in the game, and if it did than it was kind of hard to tell. I saw him throw lots of fastballs at varied speeds, a lot of changeups, and a couple of splitters when he wanted to go inside on righties. His splitter is a nice pitch. He should try to jam more hitters. If you can throw inside and throw sinkers you can skirt a lot of DIPS low K rate caveats.
The difference between Mike Wood being an above average starter and just an average starter will come down to strikeouts and the quality of the defense behind him. With his propensity for getting groundballs this guy will be lights out somenights but on others the balls will get through and he'll get drilled. I project Wood to be the second coming of Jeff Suppan, with a few less gopherballs and maybe 10-15 less K's per season. He'll be a cheap fourth starter for years to come.
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