Ask Rotoman

Mixed 5×5 10 team league. What is your take on Durazo and his return?

Yahoo! Sports: MLB – Durazo activated, takes over starting job at first

He’s back. The big question is what is he going to do?

Baseball Prospectus seems to think that he can do no wrong, though he’s 28 years old and hasn’t had more than 200 AB in a season.

I can’t really argue in good conscience that he’s going to flop. He’s got too much power and too much discipline to fail completely, and with Mark Grace clearly in decline, the Diamondbacks don’t have other apparent options.

But clearly Ruby (as Bob Brenly calls him, and why not) is brittle boned, and clearly the Diamondbacks weren’t convinced he was going to be a big league every day first baseman (or why would they have signed Grace?).

In the RotoWire magazine I projected him to hit .287 with 20 homers and 74 RBI. He’s got three-quarters of a season to do it, rather than the whole year. If he makes it he’ll be worth more like $18 than $13, especially in today’s desultory offensive climate.

As I said, I don’t think he’s going to flop, but I don’t see him as the second coming of Jesus or Abraham or whoever it is BP compares him to.

Houston-Pittsburgh Box

Josh Fogg didn’t take the loss against Roy Oswalt tonight. That means in his last three starts he’s 2-0 with one no decision. His opponents in those games were Randy Johnson once and Oswalt twice.

That’s a total of 19 innings, five runs, two walks, 13 strikeouts and 12 hits.

Griffey won’t play in St. Louis

Well, the devil is in the details. The cautious Reds seemed to be holding Ken Griffey Jr. back from returning until this weekend’s series with the all-important Cardinals. But instead they’re holding him back through at least that series (he’s supposedly going to be activated May 22nd).

Marcus Giles

He hasn’t hit as much as some of us hoped (those of us who paid absurd amounts for him in Expert Leagues), but he’s hit more than some of us who evaluated talent thought he might. Actually, his offensive numbers are right on line with those of last year, and while everyone was hoping that a breakout might come this year, it still could. There is a lot of this year left to play.

Unfortunately, on the defensive side, Giles’ manager is not happy, and so Rafael Furcal moves to second base and Mark DeRosa takes over at short.

But things may not seem to be exactly as they appear. There have been concerns about Giles’ makeup, about the seriousness with which he treats the game. As you know, Bobby Cox values the baseball verities and isn’t unwilling to slap a youngster down to demonstrate how much.

If Giles demonstrates the proper contrition, my bet is Giles sits for a few days, maybe a couple of weeks, and then gets his job back. I’m not sure he’s going to be all that much better a second baseman than he’s been, but when he starts to hit a little more (and he will–consider me converted) it won’t much matter.

If Giles doesn’t grow up fast, look for him to be dealt the way Jeremy Giambi was a few years ago. Yes, I’m predicting to Pittsburgh. Wouldn’t that be fun?

May 9, 2002 – How Sure Is A “Sure Thing”?

It seems that every few days I’m touting a Baseball Prospectus story. Well, it’s true.

For those counting on Mark Prior to bail out their seasons, this handy little study is worth reading.

ESPN.com – MLB – Box Score

The Cubs are totally desperate. Fred McGriff stole a base tonight.

Actually, McGriff has been successful on 24 of his last 29 attempts, dating back to Atlanta in 1996.

And the Cubs are still desperate. The Mark Prior watch has the purported phenom slated to be called up on May 22nd, if you’re interested.

VOTE FOR AN ALL EXPOS AND TWINS ALLSTAR GAME 2002

I’m just getting out the word about this enterprising site, which proposes a rather in your face solution to contraction.

I voted twice along party lines at mlb.com’s ballot site, then ran out of gas. It’s easy, but tedious. But I think if we measure the number of votes Fernando Tatis receives we’ll have a good idea of this site’s effectiveness.

And anything that confounds the Commish is okay with me.

Rijo Wins!

I would have sworn that Jose Rijo was older than Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould.

Westerberg and Mould Release!

The big news of the day is Manny Ramirez’s broken finger. It seems Mike Cubbage blames himself, because there wasn’t really a good reason to send Ramirez with nobody out, and he blames Ramirez, who has been told time and again not to slide hands first.

The Red Sox have been red hot of late, but this is exactly the sort of injury that can let the wind out of a team’s sales. After all, Shea Hillenbrand and Rey Sanchez and even Jose Offerman simply can’t keep up the big production, but the team relies on Ramirez to do it.

In his absence, Rickey Henderson and Trot Nixon will see some extra at bats and Nomar and perhaps Brian Daubach will see time in the cleanup hole.

The Official Site of Major League Baseball

Because it appears to be a Flash application I don’t seem to be able to link to it directly, but the Gameday live action scoring of games at mlb.com is really great. Okay, maybe most of the features are similar, except at mlb.com they have a batters box that shows pitch location for each batter.

I can’t say I’ve made as much use of it as one might, but it definitely elevates the notion of following the game on your computer to see where each pitch was, and in what sequence.