59.4- It's Like Driving Past A Highway Fatality...

[chicoruiz]

… It’s horrible, and you want to look away, but you can’t…

I refer, of course, to the season currently being put on record by Gamblers shortstop Mario de le Cruz. I have had a whole bunch of awful offensive stats put up by my shortstops in the past, but Mario’s 2059 would seem certain to set new standards of futility.

Mario is, as I write this, batting .091. In other words, he could double his batting average and still be horrible. His OPS is .276. That’s not a typo; his OPS really is .276. In 71 plate appearances he has driven in three runs and had a total of two extra base hits; both of them doubles. This is a man who in 2057 hit a league-leading 49 doubles for Jerusalem. What happened? Some kind of inner ear vertigo problem? Is he holding the wrong end of the bat when he swings? Is he lonesome for the Middle East?

Anyway, I have a shortstop at AAA who is a) a better fielder b) currently hitting .341 c) younger and d) already on my 40-man roster. So you don’t have to be some sort of baseball Nostradamus to figure out what my next move is going to be. I’m all for giving guys a chance to pull out of an early season slump, but if I don’t make that move pretty soon, my professional reputation will sink even further than it already has…

In other middle infield news, the draft has provided me with more reasons for middle infield optimism in the form of #2 overall pick second baseman Javier Aguilar. Javier was generally considered to be the top position player available in this year’s draft, and I’m looking forward to pairing him with shortstop Johnny Lazer at single-A as soon as I can can get his name on a contract.