Wednesday, June 1, 2011

In Light of (Not So) Recent Circumstances, You Play the Kids

Over on Goat Riders of the Apocalypse yesterday, blogger Rob Letterly lets lose some venom in his post, "Cubs Manager Mike Quade is Really Pissing Me Off."

While I'm not all that comfortable with calling Quade "Mr. Clean" and "Baldy McGrindy" or describing Aramis Ramirez as a "rotting corpse," there are ideas in this post that merit attention as the Orphans deal with the DL stints of Byrd, Johnson, Soriano, and Baker.

Now with Ramirez's playing prospects being day-to-day for a while because of his injury in today's game, which was yet another loss, the Juvenalian satire of Mr. Letterly makes him look like a sage: "Snyder can play left, Campana center, Colvin right, LaMahieu, Castro, Barney can make up the bulk of a young, forward-looking infield."


At least with that lineup we could see a batting order that makes more sense that what Quade has been trotting out there recently:
  1. Campana
  2. Barney
  3. Castro
  4. Pena 
Campana needs to be playing every day and batting lead-off. And Ramirez has not got it done all season in the four hole.

The final four of the order would be some selection from Snyder, Colvin, Ramirez/LaMahieu, and Soto/Hill/Castillo.

One of the aspects of his post that I question though is that they might want to play Fukudome often to see if they can get anything in return for him in a trade. 

Then again, I don't think they'll get much for him at all. The benefit of giving the younger guys playing time outweighs the potential trade potential they can reap by playing Fukudome. 

3 comments:

Fozzie said...

The Cardinals have the second best record in baseball.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

And of course the best fans in baseball. They're especially humble.

Quintilian B. Nasty said...

That sweep was painful but not surprising. Zambrano compared the current squad to a AAA ballclub after the loss.

And Campana still is not batting leadoff, and DeWitt, for whatever damn reason, has been playing left field.

Clue to Hendry/Quade: If you bring up prospects, you need to let them get regular playing time. If you don't, why they hell call them up?