I spent some time going through Smizik's blog tonight and found a post from Friday. And in it Bob makes the same point I've mentioned to a few people. So if I see it, and that fine looking man sees it, why doesn't Pirates management see it? Move Andy LaRoche to Second Base. Now they may be thinking it for all we know, what with Pedro Alvarez showing that he'll probably be on the big club by 2011, if not late 2010. Moving LaRoche to second would make a lot of sense. He hasn't shown that much power but he is a decent, not great, bat. But I can tell you when he was here with the Las Vegas 51s, (which at the time was the Dodgers Triple A squad, before they moved to Albuquerque and became the Isotopes), the Dodgers loved him. And the Dodgers have been known to be able to spot good young players. James Loney and Russell Martin were just two guys that were in Las Vegas the same time as LaRoche. Now clearly all of the answers to the Pirates becoming a good baseball are not with the club right now, heck they aren't even in the Pirates farm system right now. But moving LaRoche to that spot could help him become a rock-solid ballplayer. The last guy the Pirates moved a marginal third baseman to second it was Freddy Sanchez. And Huntington traded him for a future top of the rotation guy after some solid seasons from Sanchez. But you know, that whole trading thing is over according to Huntington. But to that I have to quote a woman from a film called "Erotic City". A man tells that woman he's never slept with a woman he didn't like. And the woman replies "yeeeaaah riiight."
Erotic City looks great.
ReplyDeleteAs to the post though, Young has been our best bat all year, so you've gotta stick with him there and see if he can learn 2B better in the offseason.
There's a lot to shakeout this year. You can't just move Young back to RF, then what do you do with Jones? Can't just say put him at 1B, because you have Clement knocking on the door.
That's why this is an extended Spring Training for the Pirates, but is is nice to be arguing about too many options instead of not enough.