Wednesday Bird Droppings

Meh … we traded Koji for a 3/4 starter who throws strikes and a 25 y/o first baseman with a cumulative .317/.373/.596 MiL line. Davis unequivocally has sucked in the big leagues, he appears to have a long, slow swing that might end with him being a AAAA player … but we gave up a year of a relief pitcher for the hope that he can make that .900+ MiL ops stick in the big leagues with enough plate appearances. I get what you’re doing, rhetorically, but we bought way low on Davis. The injury sucks, but so does this entire season. It’s all more of the same at this point.

(Interestingly, we probably could have gotten someone like Brandon Allen – who the A’s picked up for Ziegler before the trade deadline – and he probably would have been a safer choice than Davis … but without the buy-low “upside” and “potential” stuff.)

Seriously, at this point they really should just go ahead and tell Roberts that he’s not going to be on the field this year – get healthy, don’t worry about baseball for another few months, and think about having another seven months to recover and get right for next year. Matusz shouldn’t have been back until rosters expanded, ditto Britton and Chris “The Human Yo-yo” Tillman. Or … Tillman should be run out there every five days regardless of how he does, and if he ends the year as terrible as he’s been recently then we consider moving him to the bullpen for good (where he wouldn’t need a changeup and where he likely would be able to keep his fastball in the 92-94 range, where he kind of can get people out). Because good god he sucks, at least every other start or so, and I’m pretty sick and tired of watching his complete inability to replicate mechanics on successive pitches – let alone in consecutive starts. We already are forced to endure a shitfest rotation that includes Jo-jo Reyes and The Sauce, so what the hell is another three weeks? Something still is wrong with Matusz’s velocity from start to start … and now there’s sniping back-and-forth between he and the organization (his off-season work ethic versus their coaching)? Awesome. So yeah, it’s a(nother) completely lost year.

I’m glad they’re betting Reimold leadoff most days now and hope that they do it for the next month and a half to get him as many at-bats as possible – with regular plate appearances, hopefully he’ll be something like that .275/.375/.485 guy he’s been in the minor leagues and at least that would be a bright spot. The Davis injury means Reynolds should be the everyday first baseman, which also is good – we might as well see what he can do there (he hasn’t been nearly as offensive on that side of the infield, and many of us have been hoping for a while that he moved there – or to DH, were it not occupied by an underperforming geriatric – for good). Bell hasn’t been any good at all at Norfolk this year, but we might as well see what he can do with a month and a half of plate appearances too. We can’t possibly justify having a -25 URZ/150 guy at third base next year (meaning Reynolds needs to be DHing and backing up at first base) … so either Bell proves he deserves the MLB job or it needs to go to the top of our off-season shopping list. Assuming, of course, we ever want to be competitive. Which likely will not happen until we have someone in the front office who actually understands that you can MEASURE the things that tend to predict success in MLB – and that you can use those objective things to put together a good team. But that’s another issue altogether.

But yeah … after all of that stream-of-consciousness rambling, the Koji trade still wasn’t a bad one. We got decent value in return for a year and a half of a good relief pitcher.