Horrible news about top Red Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland. The 20-yr old is having brain surgery to attempt to fix a "Cavernous malformation" in his brain that can lead to clots and other issues. Baseball career totally secondary now...life threatening issue. I had just read an amazing scouting report on him recently. Hope for the best for the young guy.
Solid day for the Tigers yesterday. Probably most encouraging to see Scherzer get off the schneid and for Bonderman to have a solid outing. Raburn gets 4 hits and Damon goes deep. I liked seeing Andy Oliver have a good outing as well.
Ryan Perry? Well.....want a mulligan?
Dontrelle Willis....I dunno. Another step forward I suppose, so hey good work! Certainly its true for every pitcher at this point that its a ludicrously tiny sample to judge them....but of course that pretty much what we always do this time of year! Willis has walked 4 and K'd 4 in his 7 IP. Certainly not a ratio for success. He has coaxed 10 groundball outs which is good and not allowed anyone to hit for any power versus him yet. His BABIP stands at .227. The big thing is managing the expectations. I'm sure most join me in suspecting the "Willis of '05" hasn't exactly arrived yet due to his good start. If he can somehow just become a league average type of starter for even a portion of the season (half? 60%? dunno...) that would be helpful to the ballclub. I think the big thing in respect to his psyche is how he'll react the next time out to getting smacked around on the hill. Judging by the BABIP and the low-ish K-rate, that will happen here soon. We'll see....
I was surprised the Twins committed 5-yrs/$16.5M to Denard Span....not because he's not a good player. I just figured most commitments would be on hold until Mauer signed. (maybe he's not?!?) But then I remembered the Twins extended Nick Blackburn for 4-yr the other day. (questionable decision to me) Span will be making $16.5M during a span of seasons where Curtis Granderson will be making $28.5M....so a pretty solid value for the Twins and probably another tiny indicator of why the Tigers were looking to move Granderson before he got expensive.
Its good to hear some nice reviews of the defensive ability of Austin Jackson in CF. For his inaugural season in Detroit I truly don't care how much he hits...it appears he'll be okay...but if he can track down everything in CF he'll be plenty valuable to the pitching staff. I'm envisioning a .265/.340/.410 batting line this year....conservatively.
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