Monday, April 04, 2005

Qualifier

I just want to qualify why keeping Jeff Fassero is such a stupid, useless move.

Which player is hurt now and stands to miss a significant portion of the season for the Giants? Hm, guy by the name of Bonds? Barry Bonds?

What does Bonds provide?

Pitching? No.

Great defense? No.

Offense? Well, of course.

So now, with the greatest source of offense in baseball gone from the lineup for an unspecified period of time, does it make any sense to keep an extra pitcher, when it's your offense that just took the mightiest of blows right on the chin? Does it make sense to keep Fassero, a mediocre-at-best bullpen pitcher, instead of Brian Dallimore, who was the team's best OFFENSIVE player this spring?

Don't get me wrong, I don't have visions of Dallimore hitting .500 for the season or anything, but when the need of your team is offense and you send your best remaining option for extra offense back to Fresno, it really doesn't make a whole lot of freaking sense to me.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Daniel- what else does Dallimore have to do? Or, looked at another way, can't they move Deivi Cruz to another team? For anything? Then Dallimore comes up as backup, playing all three positions including short, improving the bench dramatically.

I really respect the guy for not going postal when he was sent down.

Maybe if Bonds is still there, Torcato wouldn't have been kept.

See ya round the yard.

BB

Anonymous said...

And another thing... if he never gets a chance to play, we'll never KNOW if he is a .500 hitter, or what. He certainly should have been on the roster instead of Ransom last year.

So there's three guys: Feliz, Torrealba, and Dallimore, who could conceivably be effective starters for near $0 had they had more playing time last year.

At least Vizquel has looked good in the field in the spring, at least from what I've seen. I don't buy all the Matheny hype but he seems to still be a great fielder.

BB

Anonymous said...

There are 3 reasons to keep Fassero over Dalimore:

1. They can. Dalimore by himself isn't a "franchise player" - but if you keep him in the minors, nobody really knows what he can do - and maybe he'll be part of a 6 team trade that puts 3 proven big league hitters and 2 pitching prospects in the Giants organizatoin.
2. Fassero's salary is small enough that it doesn't really matter whether he's there or not.
3. And the real reason - they did it to piss you off.

Mitchell Below said...

Dally all you want with Brian "Mrs." Dallimore, but when he's "your best remaining option for extra offense" your team has bigger problems.

Daniel said...

BB: for Dallimore's sake, unless there is some important callup later in the year (and I suppose there could be), the Giants need to let Dallimore go on his way. With his sparkly PCL batting stats, he'd find a job with a team that'd take him and give him a shot. He can't afford to wait around, as he's 31 years old. By the way, I'm expecting Deivi to regress this year offensively.

Pops: other teams aren't likely to trade for Dallimore at 31 years old, even as a throw-in -- they want younger prospects as throw-ins, unless there in a pennant chase and want a more experienced player. Fassero is about as superfluous as any player could possibly be. And hell yeah they did it to piss me off -- Brian Sabean's always messin' with me during our weekly backgammon games. Ahem.

Mitchell: Hey, how's it going? Yes, the Giants need much more offense than Dallimore can provide, but the fact remains that at this point he's their best option to improve the offense, and as offense is the team's glaring weakness right now (with no real strength anywhere), they need to make moves to shore it up now, before the Dodgers and Padres (and possibly even Diamondbacks) put the Giants out of the running early.

Mitchell Below said...

Hey Daniel - Apologies for the snide comment. His amazing debut game aside, I can't see Dallimore improving the Gi'nts offense at any position that he can play. I suspect that Deivi's "ability" to play SS is what keeps him on the Giants bench over Dally. What would really help in Bonds' absence would be for an OF like Todd Linden to fulfill his offensive promise, but that ain't gonna happen.

Take care,
Mitchell

Anonymous said...

I can't say I disagree with 12 pitchers, and any of those 12 not named Franklin or Fifi or Livan are just dandy...

But, that's the thing. It's not like Linden et. al. are really going to do anything but be a percentage play as a pinchhitter. I can't imagine Dallimore is a worse fielder at SS than Deivi.

I agree with Daniel, that nobody would give much for Dallimore. But, the logic is the same as my logic with moving Deivi.... anything you get to play in the majors is better than another chair being filled in the minors with a career minor leaguer (*cough* Dave Doster *cough*).

How about a mediocre catcher for AAA in the event Matheny goes down? Maybe a lefty? Cody McKay (wherever he went)? One of the dudes in Toronto (Zaun/Myers)? Any team with Menechino on the roster needs help in the middle.

BB

PS. We win! What's the magic number?

Daniel said...

Magic number? Wouldn't that be about 160? Piece o' cake.