.
Quickly, because Dr. D is kinda tired, but the Reds game had lotsa innerestin' stuff:
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MIKE FORD laced two ringing doubles, one down the LF line the other way against the shift. Ford's play this spring COULD add a bit of credibility to the Mariners' "threat" to start the season with him at 1B, and then to platoon him at 1B with Ryon Healy. The point, of course, would be to get the Yankees (who have absolutely no use for him) to accept a minimal return so we can stash him in AAA.
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DAN VOGELBACH is merely 10-for-20 with 6 (!!) walks vs. 1 strikeout and on TV they were talking about a 4-man rotation leading to a Ford/Vogelbach platoon at 1B.
Personally I just play Vogelbach at first. When "35 HR" Healy is good and ready to play, late April, it's a killer platoon. Vogelbach's ceiling, that of a Kevin Youkilis .300/.400/.500 wrecking ball, has not been ruled out. Let's see Dipoto/Servais call one of these right, what say?
Whether it's up or down on Vogelbach (or Ford or Healy) I'd just be happy to see them get a call right on a good AAA position player.
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ARIEL MIRANDA did indeed throw his secondary stuff with more conviction. The HR he gave up was on an objectively good pitch, down and in to Marosco, but perhaps subjectively dumb in that this may well be a hot spot for Morasco.
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DEE GORDON easily chucked a runner out at home. Was not even close, as the one at 3B a couple days ago wasn't.
On Bob Dutton's Twitter feed you can see a nice .gif of it and if you roll through his feed to 3 days ago you can also see the one where he gunned down a runner trying to take 3B. Both were on balls coming in; Gordon's not going to run down a ball in the gap, whirl, and fire somebody out. But then few people outside of Bo Jackson are going to do that.
Tossing a second baseman out there to play deep CF, it's important to see that he can race in with sprinter's speed and nail runners trying to take advantage of him. Whoo hoo! :- )
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GIL HEREDIA has a weird-and-wonderful combination that few players have:
(1) He swings out of his shoes every time he pulls the trigger. He loses his balance after almost every swing. Man, does he fire that bat.
(2) He can start a swing, hold up, and take a pitch juuuuuust off the plate. As you know, his strike zone component stats are excellent.
If Heredia is actually an elite outfielder defensively, he has a real chance to be a poor man's Paul Blair.
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Lance Lynn and his crazy xFIP/ERA split to Minny for a 1 year, $12 mill "pillow" contract? Says to me that Jerry Dipoto simply did not like his 81% + fastball approach and didn't want him at any price.
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Dr. D doesn't see GORDON BECKHAM as a backup shortstop, not in his 30's. There was a routine soft grounder to his right and he charged (slowly) and then FIRED a throw over to first -- which had trouble covering the distance, hitting the 1B shin high and 4 feet to his left.
So what's Andrew Romine's career slash? .238/.294/.307, which, as you know Dr. D hates being cranky, is a dead ringer for Craig Reynolds' slash line in the Mariners' debut season, 1977. Gotta get 150 games out of Jean Segura, Kyle Seager and Robinson Cano. No Ben Zobrist around to help 'em out.
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MIKE MARJAMA is a pretty cool player as a scrub but it got me to wondering: how many games can Mike Zunino catch? Let's see:
In 2017, Buster Posey caught 140 games for the Giants and got 568 AB's. Yadier Molina had 136 games and 543 AB's. Much more conventional last year was for good catchers to go 120-129 games, as you can see from clicking the link. Zunino himself had 124 games despite the 3-week break in AAA. Gary Sanchez only had 122 games though he had 525 AB's.
In 2016, Posey again caught 146 while Molina did 147 and Lucroy had 142. The Royals super catcher, Salvador Perez, had 139 but here the convention was 125-135.
If Mike Zunino is now the player we hope he is -- and BaseballHQ thinks he is -- well, he's here for 2018, 2019, 2020 doing his .500 or even .550 slugging bit and then he's gone to somebody who has $150 million bucks. Dr. D says ride him for all he's worth, avoiding of course a decline in his play due to overuse.
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Enjoy,
Dr D
