Baseball Thread 3 - The Jody Reed Edition

Freddy Sanchez has taken Cub-killing tips from Pujols. He's now 7-for-7 the past two days.

 

Things get a little worse for the Rays. Jason Bartlett on the DL with a sprained ankle.

 

Understandable. Nonetheless, it's still a business. When it's all said and done, Smoltz will retire and enter the Hall of Fame as an Atlanta Brave. Nowadays, you don't see a lot of guys play their entire career with one team. I would have liked to see Smoltz start and finish with the Braves, but oh well.

 

Greinke gives up a run on two hits in the first. His ERA might actually creep up above 1.00 today! (It is currently 0.94).

 

Point being that you had little faith in Percival, yet he was 6-for-6 and the Rays hadn't blown a save opp in the ninth inning even on the days he was unavailable before yesterday.

And Izzy was terrible last night, but there's no reason at all you should need your closer up 10-0 in the third inning.

If the bottom line is saves, and not style points, we'll see who gets more of a return on their investment this year, the Rays or the Mets.

 

Every single time I wrote that I had little faith in Percival and that the Rays would be foolish to rely on him for the 2009 season I brought up his injuries. If I remember correctly, he went on the DL five times in 2008, the final time missing the entire postseason. I didn't argue that he couldn't be effective when healthy. I argued that he couldn't stay healthy.

Regarding Izzy, I agree. You shouldn't need your closer on a night like that. But they did and he was awful. He was terrible last year (12 saves, 5.70 ERA), so trusting him as Plan B didn't make much sense, either.

The Rays' problem is that their best reliever is J.P. Howell and they want to keep him in a set-up role. Getting a legitimate closer would have made it easier to do that.

Obviously, the Mets risked more by spending more. But trusting Francisco Rodriguez made a hell of a lot more sense for a contender than trusting the combination of Percival and Isringhausen. It doesn't guarantee anything, but that's baseball. All you can really do is improve your odds.

 

Brett Gardner?

 

You really can't argue against Adam Jones' numbers .359 AVG/10 HR/32 RBI/.416 OBP/.647 SLG

Guy is on a tear right now.

 

If we're talking just this year, probably not.

But, I would throw Granderson and Sizemore in to the mix.

 

Putting Smoltz on the staff takes away a job from a guy who has a 1.30 ERA in the minors, who almost threw a perfect game in his last outing and whose shoulder isn't being held together by masking tape. Buchholz has to be wondering what else the fuck he has to do to get called up -- or traded.