Before I really start here, I gotta tell ya: Y'all are hiiiiiigh.
Actually, that's pretty much my whole point. You all being high.
Y'all that are theorizin' and speculatin' on the future of Chris Waters in the Baltimore Orioles rotation are hiiiiiiigh.
Y'all that read anything into Lou Montanez hitting a home run in his first major league at-bat are hiiiiiigh.
Chris Waters is 28 years old and just reached the major leagues. He has a career 4.09 ERA in the minors. Chris Waters is not Jeremy Guthrie. There's really no comparison. No one has ever thought Waters was as good as they thought Guthrie was. Waters isn't a stalled prospect that is rising like a phoenix; he's a scrap heap minor league veteran arm. He's only up because Hayden Penn got hit with a damn baseball bat the other day. That's how much the Orioles brass REALLY thought of him -- Hayden Penn and his near-5 ERA at Norfolk were the first choice, not Waters, and I don't want to hear about how highly recommended Waters came from the minor league staff. If the minor league staff is highly recommending someone with Waters' resume, we're boned.
I'm not trying to hate on the dude's success. He had a fabulous game. I wish they would have kept him in for the ninth. There's a very real chance that he won't ever throw that kind of game again.
Montanez is getting spun as a positive because he hit some home runs at Bowie this year. He should have, considering how old he is for the level and the fact that the Cubs once took him third overall in the draft. He is a total and complete flameout of a former prospect. Here's his MLB.com biography:
Graduated from Coral Park HS in Miami in 2000...The Chicago Cubs selected him in the first round of the 2000 First Year Player Draft with the 3rd overall pick...Was signed by Cubs scout Mike Soper...Luis's father, also named Luis Montanez, played professionally in Puerto Rico.
Woo! Mike Soper! 2000 draft! High school! Dad!
They have pretty much highlighted his career achievements.
I'm not, like, disgusted or anything. God love 'em if they both shock the world and turn into real contributors on the major league level. But these aren't prospects that delivered in their first games. These are ... bums. I don't want to be mean, really, but they're bums. They're guys that wound up in our system because other teams didn't want them, they've never progressed the way they should have/were expected to, and they are really just minor league filler.
I couldn't get excited about David Newhan, either. I couldn't get excited about Tike Redman. Travis Driskill is springing to mind. That's the same type of player we're talking about.
And doesn't it strike you odd that these things happened on back-to-back days? Doesn't that just make you think, "Waters was awesome, but now freaking Lou Montanez is hitting a home run in his first major league at-bat. This is a rib, right?"
Luis Hernandez hit .290 last year.
In almost every single case in the history of the organized, civilized world, results at the major league level can be seen coming from the minor league level, and not just when the guys are beating up on players they're simply more advanced than, either. Waters and/or Montanez succeeding in the majors would be a miracle.
I'm rooting for them. I really am. But I'm going to avoid the hysteria about it all, because we're looking less at this:
than we are at this:
