axalar

Being that his success hinges greatly on the deception/irregularity of his delivery, why would you want to give teams more time to figure it out when it wont make a difference for us this season? It's basically tipping our cap. On another question, is he being profiled as high leverage or not? Bases empty line: .276/.324/.417 Runners on: .219/.273/.254 PA's are almost exactly equal in each situation. I'm wonder if there's a story here about how they manage his use in the Minors. Maybe he's only used towards the end of the MOTO, then mops up the scrubs. Anyone got any input here on when he's typically brought in and whether he's being used in only certain situations?

All smiles in this thread until I saw #6. /sigh. Back to reality.

I'm actually on the Bourjos > Calhoun wagon. I posed the question the way I did hoping to not show my bias initially. As far as the Calhoun at 1B question, he's HAS played 10% of his Minor League games there with a perfect fielding percentage thus far. He'd have to be pretty bad to be worse than Trumbo there. If that were the case, I wouldn't have too many reservations about trading Trumbo, other than the fact he has been fairly effective this season and seems to adapt pretty well (his changed swing seems to have been effective thus far and has walked more times than all of last season, already). I believe he'll have better numbers than 2012 by the end of this season.

Let's be realistic here with Kole Calhoun: He has no path to a permanent starting position on this team unless we trade Peter Bourjos. So the simple choice is between trading Bourjos and starting Calhoun, or starting Bourjos and letting Calhoun develop in AAA (or trading him). For any of those wondering why Bourjos must go in order for Calhoun to play, consider how many games Pujols has played at 1B. We have no depth at the position for those suggesting a Trumbo trade, and no one else could be positioned in such a way as to allow Calhoun to make a serious impact for more than a couple of weeks this year.

But can he play 3B? But on a serious note.. Trumbo is starting to produce again and Bourjos will be back soon. There's nowhere for Calhoun to play without a trade (for more than 2 week intervals, at least). Guess we can always put Trumbo back at 3B

Fixed the semantics issue

Oh hello 5 RBI night.

With the Hambone getting back on track, what do you guys think the chances are that we'll have four players with both 30+ HR and 100+ RBIs? As of this post: Trumbo, 20 HR 55 RBI Trout, 15 HR 58 RBI Pujols, 15 HR 55 RBI Hamilton, 14 HR 38 RBI Have we ever done that before?

I like it. Haha. Just toss it into his repertoire and see what happens.

After that, I don't think they can afford not to fake an injury with him. Besides his ability being in the crapper, his confidence is completely gone too. He needs to spend awhile in the minors.

Pujols of Old, take note of Trout of Old.

Total PR move to make save face with the fans who believe him to be the leader / face of the Rangers.

He needs to get back on the Red Bulls.. maybe he'll focus more again.

Guess we'll find out this series if they do know something we don't

Does anyone agree that its time to bump Hamilton down again? I know Kendrick is better down in the lineup, but I don't think he'd do particularly poorly in the 5 hole. I think it gives Trumbo a bit more protection if Kendrick continues on the .300 level for AVG. Having Hamilton at 5 right now is like a black hole in our lineup where rallies seem to go to die.

Shuck has fit in incredibly well and I think there's amazing potential with him still being a 4th OF. Once Bourjos is back, I'd be pretty excited to see this sort of a lineup on days when Hamilton (.219/.283) is sitting. Great run-scoring capability, speed, avg, OBP (besides Aybar and Callaspo to a lesser extent), and still a strong defensive outfield. 1. Bourjos Avg: .313, OBP: .370 2. Trout .298 / .371 3. Pujols .251 / .323 4. Trumbo .272 / .336 5. Kendrick .300 / .339 6. Callaspo .261 / .316 7. Iannetta (or 8) .220 / .369 8. Aybar (or 7) .270 / .288 9. Shuck .292 / .337 You could make the case that Iannetta bats 8th, because then you get 3 players directly ahead of Trout with OBP over .335. I slated him at 7 though, to decrease the affects of his lackluster speed slowing those behind him down. If you told me six months ago this lineup today would inspire me more than one with Hamilton in it, I'd be pretty sad. Unfortunately, it's the truth at present.

I have a feeling this is going to be a central discussion and vent topic for the following weeks as the rest of our team comes together, but the closer role bottoms out. Let's all hope for 3+ run leads going into the 9th.

Is it just me or does it seem like Scioscia just doesn't like/trust Jerome that much? It seems like he's had an extremely short leash with him since he fell out of the starting rotation, last year. I remember there was talk about him being the fringe pitcher coming out of spring training this year and that he was among the most likely not to be on the roster, and stayed due to all the DL revolving door. This kind of couples with the fact that Scioscia pulled him for not being stretched out after 70-odd pitches that game two back, though he had pitched longer than that in his previous appearance.

Granted, Mike did a good job with his bullpen management last night, but I'd still like to see comments like this out of him once in awhile when he doesn't do so well: "If he had it to do over, Royals manager Ned Yost indicated he would have instructed Santana to intentionally walk Trumbo when the count reached 3-0. "Absolutely, that was a bad decision on my part," Yost said. "That one was on me."" http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2013_05_23_anamlb_kcamlb_1&mode=recap_away&c_id=ana (And to pre-empt, I'm more than happy with how the team/Mike is performing, as of recent.)

Bat him first.. he's got a better OBP than Aybar..

Ianetta was gone after for his OBP, not his defense. It was a fore-the-hand move by Dipoto.

He has been trending down for awhile. The only thing that has actually been helping him stay afloat are his games against Toronto, coincidentally.

You're arguing over something that really doesn't play into the main context of the article.

So in the last 2 games in CF... 4 for 8, 1HR, 1 3B, 2 2B. 5RBI. Sample size is a great thing sometimes

I was referring to this line in the quote: The pen could definitely use Madson and Burnett but I doubt they make THAT much of a difference. If he wasn't hurt, I think he would have made a big difference in last night's game.