Catching Up is Hard to Do

Comma comma down dooby doo down down. Dental work, a documentary, the holidays and my own personal shortcomings have left us dark for a while and for that I apologize. So let’s do the hard work and get back up to date with a roundup post:

• The Florida Marlins continue to astound me with their brazen attempts at trying to field bad baseball teams in an attempt to feed at the trough of public tax dollars. The players they got for Cabrera and Willis are a virtual irrelevancy because if any turn out to be as good as Cabrera, he’ll just get shipped out in fairly short order anyway. That said, a quick look anyway:
  • Cameron Maybin – The obvious key to the deal and obviously things look good so far. That said his minor league career is only about 700 at bats long so I’m a little concerned about sample size.
  • Burke Badenhop – In my opinion the second best player they got in the trade, Badenhop will live or die by throwing strikes and keeping the ball in the yard as his strikeout numbers are so so. Not a blue chipper, but could actually become a decent starter in the majors with some luck.
  • Andrew Miller – Miller is a little bit of immediate bullpen help, but frankly pitchers of his type and quality are available on the pretty cheap every off season.
  • Mike Rabelo, Eulogio de la Cruz and Dallas Trahern – Very little to get excited about with these three. Rabelo is no better than a dozen guys currently playing in the minors and elsewhere. de la Cruz is a minor league relief pitcher whose specialty is keeping the ball in the park and Trahern’s minor league strikeout numbers are abysmal without pinpoint control to match.
• Steroids!!! My opinion on this subject is well known and not all that well regarded, but it’s what I believe. Unlike Joe Jackson (or Jeff Loria), these guys are actually trying to win baseball games so trying to tar them with the same brush doesn’t fly with me. I feel most sorry for football players though. The short and long term damage they do to their bodies playing their sport is immense, and it’s these classes of drugs that could probably do them the most good in trying to recover. Under a doctor’s supervision the drugs are not particularly dangerous and could do an absolute ton of good. It’s a shame really.
• In local news, the Diamondbacks pulled off a couple of trades:
  • Dana Eveland, Carlos Gonzalez, Greg Smith, Chris Carter, Brett Anderson and Aaron Cunningham for Danny Haren and Connor Robertson. As good as Haren is and as potentially useful as Robertson is, that’s a big freakin’ haul of prospects for the A’s. The keys for the A’s will probably be Carter and Anderson, both young and both with good minor league numbers. Anderson’s debut year in the pros was impressive with 9 homers 21 walks and 125 strikeouts in 120 innings at 19 years old. Carter is a young slugger who was recently acquired for Carlos Quentin. Advantage D’Backs as Haren is the bird in the hand, but if trading Haren was deemed a necessity by the A’s, they got their pound of flesh to be sure.
  • Jose Valverde for Chad Qualls, Chris Burke and Juan Gutierrez. The Diamondbacks thinking here is that they parlay the mythical “closer” into a pitcher just as good plus two additional useful parts. Also having to go to Augie Ojeda when Orlando Hudson went down may have motivated them to go after a utility guy like Burke. In any event I don’t like this one. Qualls might be close to as good as Valverde but I don’t think he’s quite as good. And neither of the two extra parts do a lot for me. Chris Burke had a few decent minor league seasons a while back and is okay enough, but players of his caliber are readily available. Gutierrez’s minor league numbers to date are unimpressive. Advantage Astros.

Well that will do it for now, more regular posting from here on out.