M’s Draft Kanekoa Texeira
Dave · December 10, 2009 at 8:07 am · Filed Under Mariners
The M’s used their Rule 5 selection on RHP Kanekoa Texeira today. Think Sean Green – he’s a right-handed sinker-slider guy who gets a lot of groundballs and uses an arm slot that makes him tough against righties. His slider is good enough to get some swinging strikes, and his command is okay, but not great.
If he’s going to have a major league career, it will probably be as a situational middle reliever. The M’s are so deep in RH relievers that I don’t expect him to make the club. He was likely drafted as Sean White insurance – if White’s healthy, he has almost no shot at making the team.
Sounds like kind of a funny pick then. Of course, I have no idea who else was available. What do you think, Dave? Did we pass up anyone intriguing?
The M’s also took Terry Engles in the AAA portion of the draft. I’ve never heard of him, and at 23, he was pretty old for LoA and HiA last year. That said, hard to complain about the 9.72 K/9, 2.61 BB/9, and 2.23 GB/FB ratio (combined). His FIP was below 3 at both levels, but his BABIP was very low, particularly for a groundballer.
Wrong Te[i]xeira.
He sounds like somebody Triunfel can partner with for weight-control conditioning….
Love the name, though. Any pitcher with two K’s in his first name has to be great, right?
When Brock and Salk interviewed Adair he raved, raved, raved about Sean White (9:20) and the importance of having a guy like that to eat the middle innings of a lot of games, going so far as crediting many of Aardsma’s saves to having White in there as the bridge from the starter. When Drayer asked him what kind of pitcher he’d want to have to slot into an open spot in the bullpen he said point-blank “the ideal guy would be Sean White…. two would be better than one.”
The M’s were unusual in bringing a pitching coach to the Winter Meetings, and this may be the result: if there’s any doubt about Sean White’s health (or even if there isn’t), having “another Sean White” apparently would make that part of the org very happy.
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Looking at his numbers I can also see why they took a chance on him.
I’m not sure how the AAA portion works, does he have to be in Tacoma now for the whole season?
Why another middle inning relief pitcher?
Just because the winter meetings are over doesn’t mean the trading is over.
Now Z can work out a trade that includes some of our bullpen guys to another team for a position player or starter without having to fill an empty spot in the pen.
So think of him as insurnace. If we need him to fill an emptied spot, here’s there. If we don’t need him, it cost us $25,000.
Z likes to have as many options as possible.
And who knows, maybe our pitching coach spotted something fixable that will make him a lot better than he has been.
Huh. I remember the scouting reports on this Teixeira when the Betemit deal went down, and he looked better than that to me. I bet onetreehugger’s on to something, and that Zduriencik’s been thinking about dealing off a couple of our bullpen arms.
Ehh, “Betemit deal” . . . typing one thing while thinking something else. Betemit was in that deal, sure, but Nick Swisher was the guy who mattered. Anyway, Kanekoa Teixeira also came to the Yanks from the White Sox in that one.
Actually, isn’t that what Zduriencik did pretty much all of last off-season also — accumulate bullpen arms? Between injuries, trades, and general random unreliability, I don’t think you can go wrong grabbing as many as you can under the “pasta meets wall” philosophy.
I find it rather intriguing that Kanekoa is a guy that Zduriencik has drafted before. Obviously Ol’ Jack saw something he liked back then, and that hasn’t changed. Makes me even more interested to see what happens with him.