Tuesday, January 16, 2007
The Ortiz Signing
While I think that the Ortiz signing is a good one, the 2002 playoffs somewhat obscure my memory of him, just as they do every other player who left in that offseason, so my opinion of him in those years is probably not the best one to consult. Nevertheless, what with the fact that Arizona is eating up all his salary and Ortiz isn't guaranteed a thing from the Giants, I don't think it's too bad an idea. Yet, if Arizona, which is so desperate for pitching it picked up Randy Johnson, is paying Ortiz $8,000,000 a year (read: a lot of money, even in today's world of $126,000,00 signings) to get his rear end out of the BOB, it makes you wonder...
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2 comments:
Check Ortiz's game stats, once he was changed to a reliever, his rate stats were pretty good except for all the homers. Plus he did great in Puerto Rico's winter league. I'm hoping he pitches poorly enough in spring for the Giants to not start him and start Sanchez instead, but good enough so that he is placed in the bullpen. I think he was starting to turn himself around in Baltimore under Mazzone and will continue that with Righetti.
With him in the bullpen, we have backup should we need a closer in the worse case scenario: Benitez traded (good scenario), and Wilson flops (worse scenario). And since we don't know if he's with us long term anyhow, I would rather give him a bullpen spot, where we clearly need some help and depth there, and give a shot at the rotation to someone who would be here for a long while, like Sanchez.
I certainly hope that he can anchor the bullpen. I don't really see that happenng at first, though. To me, it's more likely that he has a great spring, gets bombed as a starter, and moves to the bullpen later. I do like the way his mechanics are going, though. His winter league performance means whatever Mazzone was doing worked. No wonder he had that great season with the Braves.
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