Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Monday, August 25, 2014
Trading veterans because your dumbo manager refuses to stop playing them? John Mabry?? I’ve seen this movie before!! Oscar Taveras is playing and playing well lately, easing Cardinals fans’ concerns about manager Mike Matheny frequently benching the 22-year-old rookie for lesser talents, and now Matheny is full of praise for the work Taveras has put in to get better.
Matheny told Rick Hummel of the St. Louis Post Dispatch that Taveras has made “huge adjustments” since a slow start to his MLB career, adding: He’s really worked hard in the cage with [hitting coaches John Mabry and David Bell] on his approach and shortening his swing a bit. Even his outs were pretty loud. He’s definitely taking steps in the right direction.
It’s too small of a sample size to get truly excited yet, but Taveras is in a 9-for-22 stretch right now and has hit a combined .280 with just 13 strikeouts in his last 100 plate appearances.
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1. cardsfanboyTaveras playing time wasn't about Matheny not liking Taveras, it was about putting the team on the field that was producing. In theory both Taveras and Craig are probably right now about equal quality hitters, and both were hitting like a defense first shortstop.
The thing is ZiPS RoS has him at 274/318/414; PECOTA RoS is a little more friendly at 283/322/442, but that's not particularly impressive for a corner OF. It's not the projection so much as the silly "Best Hitting Prospect Since Pujols" label. Cardinals fans should be more cynical about this nonsense after the "Next Edmonds" was wisely dropped for a generic guy like Jon Jay.
Remind me--who was the "Next Edmonds"?
Colby Rasmus, who has 12.9 career war at age 27(782 games), when Edmonds had 14.9 (500 games)at relatively the same age, although Edmonds had two 5+ war seasons by that point, and Colby's best has been 4.6.
True about hitting LHB, but in his five seasons before arriving in STL his OPS was .888, .946, .868, .874, and then a .766 in an injury-shortened season (129, 137, 123, 123, 95 OPS+). That may not merit an exclamation point, but he was pretty darn good.
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