Listening to the Washington Nationals and the Detroit Tigers
play a spring training game. (Well, I
was until the MLB AtBat app started having buffering issues – first time that’s
happened in a long time. As I post this,
it’s now 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth – but remember in spring training the
wins don’t matter.) Mets apparently are
off today, as are the Cubs. I enjoy
listening to Tigers games, even though the team itself is probably going to be
lousy this season (they’re leading 1-0 as I write this, but mostly because they
have a lot of their starters in, while the Nationals are playing nothing but
reserves). Dan Dickerson is very solid
at play by play (his first few years overlapped with the last few years of the
legendary Ernie Harwell), and Jim Price is a longtime Tiger personality, having
been a catcher for the team from 1967-1971.
(He’s also 76 years old, so listen to him while you can.)
A few things I’ve learned from the broadcast:
1) Tigers catcher John Hicks may make a difference
for the team. I gather James McCann’s
three-year stint as their starting catcher may be in danger, since he’s not
very good at framing pitches. I don’t
know about Hicks’ pitch-framing abilities, but he ended two innings in a row
from behind the plate – throwing out Moises Sierra trying to steal second base
in the second inning, and then picking Brian Goodwin off first base to end the
third. That will get you noticed.
2) The Nationals don’t have many openings, but
fifth starter is one of them. They’re
auditioning Edwin Jackson today, and I don’t think he has much of a chance. Jackson is the very definition of the term “well-traveled”
– he’s been on 12 of the 30 major league teams, and this is his second tour of
duty with the Nationals. He was an
average-to-above-average starting pitcher through 2011, and, in a move that
Theo Epstein probably won’t mention when he writes his autobiography, was
signed to a four-year, $52-million deal with the Cubs. Jackson responded by going 16-34 with a 5.37
ERA and -3.4 WAR over two and a half years, at which point the Cubs threw in
the towel and ate the remainder of the contract. He wasn’t terrible
today – one run on three hits and two walks in three innings – but nothing
worth remembering, either. I think the
Nats were hoping Jake Arrieta would take a bargain-basement deal to sign with
them, but he went to the Phillies over the weekend (which might give the Phils
an outside chance at a wild-card spot if everything goes right), so they’re
looking at Jackson and two rookies, A.J. Cole and Erick Fedde. Cole appears to be the favorite (he was not
awful in 52 innings last year), but honestly, if I were running the Nats I’d be
putting a call out to Alex Cobb, who’s the only noteworthy free agent left other
than reliever Greg Holland, and who would probably take a low-end deal with
incentives to play for a contender. This
is the last year the Nats are going to have Bryce Harper, barring something
miraculous – do they really want to go with Edwin Jackson as their fifth
starter?
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