On the Marlins claiming Borchard
From the press release:
Seattle Mariners Executive Vice President & General Manager of Baseball Operations Bill Bavasi announced today that the Florida Marlins have claimed outfielder Joe Borchard off waivers.
The Mariners had designated Borchard for assignment on Sunday, April 23.
Borchard, 27, appeared in six games with Seattle this season, including making two starts in center field. Borchard, 27, appeared in six games with Seattle this season, including making two starts in center field.
Florida’s been running out a horrible outfield that Borchard would improve. No, really, go check it out.
Josh Willingham has the range of narcoleptic cow in left.
Reggie Abercrombie’s in center.
Chris Aguila’s in right.
You could put Huey, Dewey, and Louie the ducks out there and do as well. I wonder what those three are up to these days, anyway? Selling speakers out of a van to gullible teenagers in the suburbs? Running a gas station at some arbitrarily-established “town” along the I-5 corridor, spending their time fixing flats and glaring at the customers using the pay-at-pump feature?
His legacy will be ridding the team of Matt Thornton. In Chicago so far, his 3.18 ERA conceals a standard Thornton performance so far: a hit, a walk, and a strikeout every inning. That’s our boy. Go get ’em, tiger!
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With a situation like this, when it was quite clear Florida needed outfield help, was there any way Bavasi could have traded Borchard for anything useful, or would the Marlins have known they didn’t need to deal since there was a very good chance we were going to try to put him through waivers?
Once he’s DFA’d, you’ve pretty much given up. If there was a conversation, it was probably
“Hey, we’re going to claim Borchard.”
“Okay. Enjoy.”
They probably asked for the courtesy “live A-ball arm” and got turned down. Really, though, you’re not getting anything for Borchard.
Too bad Borchard didn’t beat out Bloomquist or Reed in CF.
If Hargrove were to ever figure out what to do with those people who sit on the bench when our team is pitching, Borchard would have been a halfway decent option.
Or maybe I just preferred him because there wasn’t mindless drooling going on about him.
Borchard will hit 20 taters and whiff about 250 times.
from the Sun Times:
The “Ozzie Guillen is crazy” bandwagon made room for one more rider. After White Sox reliever Matt Thornton hadn’t pitched in 15 days, Guillen not only used him in the ninth inning of a 2-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday, but also came back Sunday to have Thornton strike out Chone Figgins in the eighth inning of a tie game. The Sox rallied to win 6-5. “It was a huge boost of confidence,” Thornton said. “I was never put in those types of situations [in Seattle]. Maybe I came into the game in a few ties, but ninth inning, one-run game? Not like that — especially after I had 15 days off. That blew my mind. My agent even joked with me, ‘Your manager really is crazy, isn’t he?'”
so who takes down the Mariners first, Thornton or Nellie?
good for borchard. he gets a legit opportunity now.
#2
I meant before the DFA. Though a call this early in the season asking about interest in our newest acquisition may have been a clear sign that he was about to be DFA’d anyway.
Not necessarily. Teams might sometimes trade for a player they don’t particularly want or need simply because they think it will be easier to move him than the guy they just shipped off.
What happened to all the “M’s will make a move soon” talk from a week and a half ago?
“What happened to all the “M’s will make a move soon†talk from a week and a half ago?”
I think Borchard took any chance of getting Pujols with him to Miami. Damn you, Bill Bavasi!
speaking of ChiSox pitchers, thursdays starter will be AL Pitcher of the Month Jose Contreras.
“Contreras, 34 (cough) went 4-0 with a 1.45 ERA (6 ER/37.1 IP) and 24 hits allowed in five starts for the White Sox to win his second consecutive monthly award, the first pitcher in franchise history to accomplish that feat. Also honored in September 2005, Contreras becomes the first pitcher since Boston’s Pedro Martinez (1999-2000) to finish one season and begin the next as AL Pitcher of the Month. He also becomes the first pitcher since Minnesota’s Johan Santana (July-September 2004) to win the award in consecutive months.
The 6-foot-4, 245-pound native of Cuba owns a 12-game regular-season winning streak, the longest active streak in the major leagues and tied with Jim Kaat (1974-75) for the fourth-longest by a White Sox pitcher since 1970. Contreras is 12-0 with a 1.84 ERA (20 ER/97.2 IP) in 13 starts during the winning streak and 15-1 with a 2.15 ERA (31 ER/129.2 IP) in his last 17 starts including the postseason.”
So this means they get $50,000 for him, doesn’t it? Whereas if they simply cut (DFA’d) Thornton they’d have probably gotten nothing (unless somebody claimed Thornton on waivers). Right?
But I don’t see why they didn’t give him a shot as the backup/platoon CF instead of Will-Blo.
This sort of sucks, because if anyone should be the non-platoon partner for Reed, it should be Borchard… but I guess we would have just DFA’ed Thornton instead of trading him had Borchard not been available, and Choo’s lighting up the PCL if we give up on Reed…so, “meh”, I guess.
I see that the White Sox signed Jeff Nelson yesterday. There was a note in one of the Seattle papers about how Nelson used to ride Thornton mercilessly last year in the Seattle pen, and Putz and Thornton were laughing over the phone about how Thornton will now have to suffer Nellie once more ….
Local boy Todd Linden missed the Florida boat only because he sprained his thumb just before a deal went down, according to local pals of LInden’s. So Linden gets to solider on uselessly in Fresno with an organization that’s completely soured on him.
Except Choo is not a centerfielder. I’d love to have Choo succeed in the majors, but who, exactly, will play centerfield? The logical assumption is probably Ichiro!, but that’s just an assumption at this point. Then again, I’d just as much like Reed to all of a sudden put things together and be the player we thought he’d be. Of course, that seems rather unlikely, for a few reasons.
I would have kept him and DFA’d Lawton. What the hell has Lawton done for them that they couldn’t have gotten from Borchard? Choo is raking in Tacoma and Snelling is due before the ASG, so I guess that was their rationale, but why not have the extra bang and a younger pair of legs in the OF for now?
#18: Because turning the team over to “the kids” breaks the “copact with the fans to make the effort to put a winning team on the field” that Chuck Armstrong has publicly stated before. In the team’s eyes, letting kids play implies that the season has been already thrown under the bus.
That’s “compact”
that sounds like a gritty front office
I have no problem with Lawton being on this team instead of Borchard. I’m not yet convinced Lawton is done, and he has had a pretty productive major league career. If he can fulfill his career line in the role of a back-up/ play when the regular is sucking, I’ll be satisfied.
To me the larger issue is, what to do about centerfield for this season, and probably next, if Reed is not going to get any more legitimate chances from Hargrove?
Lawton is not a regular CF, and neither is Choo.
And neither, I should add, is Willie, even though Dave N. and others may think he is.
Does a narcoleptic cow have less range than a regular cow? Does it fall asleep while it’s running after the ball? Maybe they should get Ibanez checked out for that.
In the team’s eyes, letting kids play implies that the season has been already thrown under the bus.
Someone ought to inform Armstrong that Bavasi’s been busy throwing this season under the bus ever since he showed up in town.
I’m never going to be sorry for all those winning seasons in the late 90s and early 00s, but they’ve cast this sort of veil over the eyes of M’s management, as if the M’s can live up to some kind of compact about putting a winning team on the field without: 1) Spending with the Red Sox & Angels, or 2) Occasionally, and genuinely, rebuilding.
Attendance is already down. The building blocks are clearly there for this team to be competitive soon(ish). Coming off a disastrous season, does anybody believe that fans would blame them for pulling a minor rebuild? It’s not like there’s any need for a Marlins-style firesale.
Anyway, I’m not sure the Borchard thread is the place to start this rant, so I’m going to stop now.
I love the Cleveland approach. They basically decided, together, that the Indians would suffer through a few losing seasons (just two, as it turned out) while they gathered the young players that will comprise a dynasty that I think will terrorize the American League between 2007 and 2010.
Well, Jones is down in Tacoma too, right? Or is he not considered a fit at CF? With Ichiro ensconced in RF, the M’s end up with like six potential LFs and no CF. Remember when the black hole at RF was the problem? (Actually, with Ibanez sliding around out there I guess it still is right now, but at least there are some parts to plug in there coming through the pipeline…)
Adam Jones isn’t ready. Not when he’s got a 1/18 K/W ratio. Plus, he’s still learning to play center. In the two Rainiers games I’ve seen, he’s taken some very scenic routes to fly balls.
I thought it was a black hole in LF. With Ichiro and Buhner, RF has been pretty well manned for nearly a decade and a half.
You know, Texas did essentially the same thing as Cleveland when they got out from under the ARod contract. The only problem there is that they apparently forgot they need a pitching staff too (and their home field is almost as scary as Coors for potential FAs).
Sorry, typo: I meant to say “blackhole at LF” — yeah, obviously RF hasn’t been a problem for a long time…
For what it’s worth, three of Thornton’s five walks have been intentional.
Lawton is in center again tonight. On the radio pre-game Hargrove said that the position is not “up for grabs” and that Reed is the player that they want to man center regularly, but he has to hit better. I can’t necessarily disagree with that.
I agree with the Cleveland Way. Wouldn’t it be great to have a front office that realizes that the team needs turnover, not tweaks? Wouldn’t it be fun to watch homegrown talent grow into great baseball players?
Look, I love rooting for Sexson, but players that are drafted and come up through the system, I think, just get more emotional investment. I realize, I’m coming off as weird here, and maybe not the proto-stat type way of thinking, but I’d love to watch young players come up and get a legit chance to succeed and carry the team.
That takes committment right on through the manager though, who must realize that when a young player *cough* Lopez *cough* is one of your best hitters, you don’t bat him 8th.
What would be wrong with sending Reed down to Tacoma for a few weeks to work on his swing? Sitting on the bench isn’t going to help him, but we can’t play him with the way he’s swinging right now.
#34 – I agree! Watching guys come up through the system, and making an impact at the big league level is much more fun. It’s almost like watching your own kids grow up…
I’d be happy to go with The Cleveland Approach, but I wonder if it is the ownership group that is responsible for the patch-and-pray system we’re using? That they didn’t want to add another couple years of .400 ball on top of the last two? It might have been different if the decision had been made those 2.5 years ago.
The Cleveland Approach? You can’t rip off the Montreal Expos any more.
The Cleveland Approach is a team in the indoor soccer league….
Really? I thought they already had all those kids in the system when they had A-Rod.
I’ll be a Joe Borchard fan for life.
Best of luck to that individual.
#27 – Adam Jones makes Willie Bloomquist look like a gold glover. If you were looking to bring up an someone from Tacoma to play center occasionally, the best choice is probably TJ Bohn.
when they got out from under the A-Rod contract
What, they gave away their best player, covered a bunch of his salary, and got nothing approaching his value back?
Texas was idiotic to get rid of A-Rod.
Borchard is 3-4 so far in his Marlins debut.