We are now four days away from opening day. I simply can’t wait. Less than two weeks left until the minor league season is under way as well. Happy birthday to me (first weekend of the minor league season I turn 27), nice present baseball!
The Reds roster was trimmed down over the weekend. Devin Mesoraco, Dave Sappelt, Chris Valaika, Dontrelle Willis and Jeremy Hermida were sent down. Willis will be heading to the rotation just in case, since the Reds have quite a few serious issues with their rotation if you somehow missed it. The Reds have given Hermida the chance to pursue a MLB gig if he would like.
Project Prospect’s Adam Foster was in Arizona watching the Reds this weekend. There was some good news, some questionable news and some bad news. He tweeted all weekend about it, but here were the highlights (and low lights) that caught my eye:
(Kyle) Lotzkar just took himself out mid-outing. He threw a few between-inning warmup pitches then walked back to the dugout pointing to his elbow.
That is never good, given his arm history and mechanics, but there is word out of Arizona that he felt something, but that for now, it doesn’t seem to be something serious. I wouldn’t expect him to begin the year on an active roster though.
Getting my first close look at Yorman Rodriguez and Billy Hamilton‘s swings. Their skills have been vastly exaggerated.
This is why taking one day looks at players, especially young ones, is generally a bad idea.
I’d gladly take Ronald Torreyes over Billy Hamilton.
Torreyes continues to get more and more people raving about him every time a new set of eyes sees him. I hope he finds himself in Dayton at some point this year. I would love to get an extended look at him this season.
There is a lot more, so go give his entire feed a read starting from Saturday morning.
Philippe Valiquette is also apparently out for an unknown period of time with a pulled lat. Lots of injuries coming down on the Reds pitchers, hopefully none of them are structural in the long run though, but even ones like this start adding up when they are happening to 5 and 6 different guys.
Here is something that I didn’t know. Corey Brinn, notes that there is a difference, or at least legally standing, a difference between certain products that professional athletes can get directly from a company and the ones we can buy over the counter at most stores, such as Muscle Milk (among many others of course). Very interesting read.
For you draft guru’s, Matt Garrioch has up an update on some of the high schoolers up for this years draft over at MLBBonusBaby.com.