Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Escobar remaining (maybe?)!

As quoted from the post (I'd say Washington Post, but not sure if I'm infringing on any copyright laws):

"Another move is pending Tuesday, when lefty Mike O'Connor is scheduled to be recalled to start against Florida. Utility player Damian Jackson, who has spasms in his esophagus (Blogger note... I am most definitely not going to ask what the h-e-doubletoothpicks that's all about), is expected to be placed on the disabled list to make room, club officials said Monday night."

So why don't they just release him already?

In any case, it would appear from this that Escobar stays. Damn good. Hopefully.

And on a side note, I agree Screech's Best Friend (HA!), there is no life/confidence/whatever to this team at all, it feels like it's senior year, and everyone's waiting on their job application results, only to find out where they're going to go, therefore there's really nothing to invest in at this point... Of course, Alfonso (SORIANO!!!!) is filling in his App quite nicely lately...

This is all gonna take patience, patience, and more patience I know, but at this point I hope Kasten's words come to fruition soon. Bring up the youth. Let 'em play, thick and thin, better and worse, and then see what we got in a few years. This could be a helluva lotta fun.

Cheers

2 comments:

Screech's Best Friend said...

Last weeks trade still bothers me. I just don't see Lopez and Kearns being more useful in the long run than Bray and Majewski. The Nats also have a short term infield problem with only Marlon Anderson as the backup. Jackson is going on the DL (I wish he would get released!!) and Bowden traded Harris to the Reds. The Nats just have NO TEAM RIGHT NOW!! NONE!

Chris Needham said...

Don't worry about the short term. This season doesn't really matter, does it? Is there any difference between losing 75 games and losing 65? not really.

Losing Majewski's nothing. He's a good reliever, but he's not an ace. Losing Bray MIGHT be bad, but three weeks ago you didn't know who the hell he was. He might turn into BJ Ryan, but he'll probably be just a regular reliever. Meanwhile, the Nationals got two players who will start and contribute 1,000 combined ABs next season. That's a pretty good return.

Here's the best thing I read recently about bullpens, talking about how easy it is to shake something up. It's about the Mariners:

Lowe’s a perfect example of why this new “the cost of good relievers is skyrocketing!” theory is nonsense. Relief pitching is the easiest job in baseball, and there are literally good arms in every minor league system who could come up and do the job well right now. You’d think organizations would learn when year after year, the leaderboard of elite relievers is cluttered with names their mothers wouldn’t have recognized before the season started.

The Mariners bullpen is a great example of this - J.J. Putz was a fringe prospect who is now an all-star caliber closer, George Sherrill was signed out of the independent leagues and is about as tough on lefties as anyone alive, and now the M’s look to have struck gold with Mark Lowe, who was a 5th round draft pick two years ago and had an unimpressive minor league resume coming into the year. Only Rafael Soriano was considered any kind of special talent.

Building a bullpen isn’t hard, just because Buster Olney tells you it is