There's nothing quite like winning to get me back to writing!
On numerous occasions I've wanted to get back into the flow but just couldn't for one reason or another. Now that the season is underway, however, no excuses are valid.
Though it was slow to progress, it was a productive off-season as we were able to add a number of pieces to the Club to solidify our depth. Those moves combined with the continued maturation of our player development system should make it easier for us to navigate the inevitable injuries and other obstacles that will come our way over the course of the season. Last night was a perfect example...
We entered spring training relying heavily on our back four relievers and maybe most importantly on our one tough left-hander, Joe Thatcher. However, Joe battled a sore shoulder through spring training, so we decided that it would be best for him to start the year on the disabled list. Though we had a number of good right-handed options in Adam Russell, Ryan Webb, Ernesto Frieri, Radhames Liz, Greg Burke, Luis Perdomo, etc, we turned to left-hander Cesar Ramos, a starter throughout his career, and asked him to assume that spot in the pen. Last night he entered the game with the bases loaded and just one out to face Stephen Drew, a situation that he has never faced in his baseball career. He made two excellent pitches resulting in a weak groundball to short for a big out. Exhale.
It's easy to say that Chris Young deserves the game ball for last night's win with six innings of one hit ball against a tough lineup, because he probably does. Or maybe Everth Cabrera gets the game ball with a single, double, triple, stolen base, and four rbi (damn, that was a good night). Cesar Ramos, though, may have gotten the biggest out of the game. Given the circumstances of his spot on the team, it also may have been the most gratifying performance from an organizational standpoint.
Hopefully we'll have many nights like this one where we get key contributions from multiple players. That was what made us successful over the final two months of last season and even the past few weeks of spring training, so it was good to see it carry into the early season.
Congrats to Cesar on his first hold (and Jed on his first win). It's always good to get that first one out of the way.
7 comments:
Welcome back, Paul! I'm looking forward to reading each post.
Great to have you back Paul! Perhaps you could do an entry to fill us in a little on your move from the baseball ops side to reporting to Garfinkle, and the sort of issues on which your time and efforts are now focused?
Great to have you back Paul! Perhaps you could do an entry to fill us in a little on your move from the baseball ops side to reporting to Garfinkle, and the sort of issues on which your time and efforts are now focused?
It's alive! Love your musings - thanks.
I'd like to know the difference in style and methodology between the old ownership / mgmt and this years. I know last year we brought up a lot of guys, because we had to - are we going to see more "experimenting" like the Ramos move and what is the process that makes that happen?
Agreed with eveything you said there Paul....BUT!.....There was one worry that you did not touch on and that is that Chase with his second error has now committed only one fewer than we had from the position all of last year and that is a lil alarming. On Chases positive side though is he is swinging a real good stick now and that is GREAT to see....I don't expect 3 E's from him for the whole year but if he breaks out with the stick and can keep the E's in the 10-20 range for the year and not (God Help him please) the 30-40 range I will be happy with the tradeoff between him and Kooz
Great to have you back. Your blog was one the first I looked for during the last couple seasons.
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