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The Brian Cashman ? Mike Axisa of River Avenue Blues: "The organization is clearly trying to avoid putting any undue pressure on Jesus Montero. Despite the fact that he?s the best hitter in the Triple-A Scranton lineup, he batted way down in the order last night, in the six hole. They did this with Austin Jackson last year, and eventually moved him up in the order when he got comfortable and started to produce. Either way, it?s good that they?re taking it easy on him. Being in Triple-A at age-20 is tough enough, he doesn?t need to feel like he has to carry the offense on top of that." The Theo Epstein ? Joe Veno of Fire Brand of the AL: "(Marco) Scutaro?s new found value was mostly caught up in his glove and position of course, but also in his sudden ability to take a walk. ?Not that he was ever bad at it, but his BB% jumped to over 13 percent. ?Which bested every other season in his career, in which he played over a hundred games.. We are hoping he simply peaked late, rather than became ?lucky? late. Anyway, keep the expectations reasonable, and Marco Scutaro should not disappoint. ?Especially since he is being paid less than what the average free agent costs." The Alex Anthopoulos ? Hugo of BlueBirdBanter: "Vernon Wells led off the inning with a booming home run, his fourth of the season.? He also walked during the game.? Vernon did strike out in a key situation a few innings earlier, but there's no doubt that his bat is generating drive and power that he just didn't have last season.? It must feel great to be healthy and hitting so well right out of the gate - hope he rides the hot start into a nice year." CR Note: Wells didn't have four homers in any single month during the 2009 season. The Mike Flanagan ? John McNamara of the Capital Gazette: "Even though he pitched only 4.3 innings in Double-A debut last night, Bowie Baysox starter Zach Britton showed why he's considered a topflight prospect. Britton, the Carolina League Pitcher of the Year at Class A Frederick in 2009, was perfect through his first three innings in last night's season opener and allowed just three hits during his outing." The Andrew Friedman ? DRaysBay: "B.J. Upton is a popular subject in the media as of late as people are asking if he can really bounce back and hit to his potential this season. In the first three games this season, Upton has only two singles in 12 at bats with two walks and three Ks. Not good, but the sample size is even worse. The major difference between the 2008 season and the 2009 season for Upton was the walks (ignore balls in play for now). His walk rate dropped six percentage points in 2009 to 9.1% after a career high of 15.2% in 08. This is a plate discipline issue that is likely related to Upton's O-Swing% which rose about 4.5 points last season (numbers per Fan Graphs)." The Dave Dombrowski ? Kurt Mensching of Bless You Boys: "(Dontrelle Willis' start) was far from a work of art or science. But it was serviceable. His fastball was slow enough to be classified as a change-up by the Pitch F/X system at the start of the game, but worked its way up to 94 mph at one point. Early on, just watching him was enough to make you nervous. Yet by the sixth inning, he was actually dealing quite well and looked for all the world like a professional pitcher." The Mark Shapiro ? Ryan of Let's Go Tribe!: "Justin Masterson looked good but left after five innings. That left a tight game in the hands of a bullpen without Kerry Wood. Before the end of the game, six out of the seven pitchers in the bullpen made appearances. If you were still viewing this game through the prism of last year's team, you would conclude that the White Sox would win going away. After all, in a matchup in bullpens, Chicago probably wins at least 7 out of 10 times. But that's not what happened." The Bill Smith ? Joe Christensen of the Star Tribune: "The Twins hit nine home runs in the series, and six of those came from the No. 6-9 spots in the batting order. This is the first time since 1997 the Twins have hit at least one home run in each of their first four games." The Kenny Williams ? South Side Sox: ".225, .237, .261. No those aren't the low batting averages that rode Jim Thome* out of town. Those are the White Sox batting averages for the last 3 Aprils. Three games into the season they're well on their way to repeating that trend with just 14 hits in 3 games, good for a .154 team average. And it's not like they've been facing stellar pitching." The Dayton Moore ? Bob Dutton of the Kansas City Star: "The Royals showed a pretax operating profit for a seventh straight year last season, according to Forbes magazine in its annual financial appraisal of all 30 major-league teams.. Forbes ranks the Royals? current franchise value at 24th among the 30 teams. Forbes contends the Royals generated $155 million last year in revenue ? up $12 million over the previous year. Its figures are the net of revenue sharing and stadium financing. That revenue represents a $51 million jump from 2005 and reflects the increase of revenue-sharing within the industry." The Billy Beane ? Curtis Pashelka of the Mercury News: "Starting pitcher Brett Anderson continued the momentum he created during the last few weeks of the 2009 season. So did the rest of his team. Anderson allowed only three hits in six shutout innings, and the A's picked up 11 hits in support to beat the Seattle Mariners 6-2 on Thursday at the Oakland Coliseum and win their season-opening series.. "He controlled his fastball, his breaking ball and changeup on both sides of the plate, which he didn't do early last year," A's manager Bob Geren said. "That part of his game came on in the second half, and he showed it out there in his first start." Anderson threw 97 pitches, 60 for strikes, and was greeted with a warm ovation as he walked off the field." The Jack Zduriencik ? Geoff Bakers of the Seattle Times: "Three straight losses by the M's, this one a 6-2 defeat, has revealed some early season concerns. 1. This lineup has struggled against lefty pitching so far. Only one run against the two southpaw starters faced thus far. Both runs today came with the Mariners down 6-0 in the ninth and facing the Oakland bullpen. 2. The bullpen is still an obvious concern, even with Jesus Colome picking up three key innings today. 3. The starting pitchers have to get deeper into games, even if it is early on. Certainly, they have to go at least five innings. Ryan Rowland-Smith barely managed that last night and Doug Fister went only four frames today. The starters are the No. 1 reason the bullpen is in so much trouble. The No. 2 reason is the idea to go with a six-man pen. That's been scrapped and things do look a little better after Colome went those three innings." The Tony Reagins ? Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times: "The Angels went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position Thursday and are six for 23 with runners in scoring position on the season. "It's going to take more than four games to get some offensive continuity, but we all feel good about the potential and the depth of our lineup," Manager Mike Scioscia said. "We've had a rough three games with runners in scoring position. "Even though it was 10-1, it was a close game in the middle innings, their guys kept putting up zeros, and we didn't get that one hit with runners in scoring position that could have changed things." " The Jon Daniels ? Joey Matschulat of Baseball Time In Arlington: "Through three games, the Rangers are the second-worst team in baseball in terms of hitting runs above average against change-ups, at a whopping minus-2.7 runs -- perhaps not even worth mentioning, but reflective of our perception that Texas is getting killed by this particular pitch so far. More troubling, however, is Josh Hamilton's appearance at the plate. I don't know if it's that he appears to be so late on so many pitches (a function of diminished bat speed?), or if it's that his follow-through looks -- for the lack of a better descriptor -- lackadaisical, or if it's simply that he's not getting good wood on anything right now, but he's clearly not right, and if this is what the Rangers have to look forward to from their putative No. 3 hitter, then that's an enormous problem going forward." Chris Reina is the executive editor of RealGM. Click here to follow his Twitter feed. |
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