35.23. By Gawd... That's Torres' Music!

[agrudez]

With the recent deal moving 1B Albert Gaona (whom never really seemed to take to playing in HSV - with a ~.75 OPS across over 200 ABs with the team), there is a spot on the 27 man for *somebody* to take. Now... who could that possibly be? Oh, I don't know, how about our #1 prospect, Tim Torres?! Now, you may be wondering what moving a 1B out has to do with bringing a CF up... so let's go through it.

Chris Klein from DH->1B
David Hall from LF->DH
Leon Sandcastle from CF->LF
And... BOOM... Tim Torres from apple of my eye to CF

I guess you can cry over some spilt milk with the downgrade of 1B defense from Gaona/Templeman to Klein, but that seems like it'd be pretty pedantic (who really cares about 1B defense anyway?). On the other hand, the upgrade in LF is *huge* between Hall (below average) to Sandcastle (elite) and the upgrade in CF looks tangible as well (8 range to 9 range). Not to mention that I believe - given our stadium - that Torres will outhit Gaona in my lineup, too. Win-Win-Win... I can't wait to see this kid in action.

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That's not to say we didn't like Gaona and didn't think he'd turn it around eventually for us (we certainly didn't expect a .75 OPS when we acquired him from Madison), though. He has never been on our block for a reason - we like him. Even if he wasn't going to be a long term starter for us (it's hard to waste a spot at 1B/DH on a RHB with our stadium - unless they are truly elite), he was young, cost controlled and would've made a tremendous short side platoon for us while our roster continued to come together over the next few seasons (which, in fact, is how we started using him towards the end of his tenure with Templeman).

In return (other than opening a logical spot for Torres to finally come up to the big club), we got Cortez and Maestas - two lottery tickets that I'm tepidly excited about. In Maestas we get an elite defensive CF prospect that bats LH'd - which is already 70% or so of what we need in a CF of the future. Hit bat right now is underwhelming at 5/7/4/5; however, if that manifests in, say, a 6/7/5/5 split vs. RHP then he's instantly a stud even without bumps (for us, anyway). Of course, at 16 years old it's bumps you're hoping for... though, truth be told, at that age it's lumps that we're expecting. In Cortez, he's a young 21 years old (having just turned 2 months ago) and already fully developed - which is something we love to see in a prospect as we feel it often portends POT bumps. As of now, he looks like a short-side platoon DH (which isn't terribly inspiring, obviously) at the ML level, but one under-rated thing about him is that he is the prototype for what a RHB should look like in a HSV lineup (ie. high focus on CON/GAP/EYE as opposed to POW - since our stadium doesn't increase HRs for RHBs like it does LHBs... so the former is always playing catchup with the latter when they are power hitters). If he doesn't bump... oh well, he's cost controlled and it saves us some money from signing a FA for 3M to fill that role, but if he does bump - we might have a steal. Time will tell.