Off Topic
Insiders Say Call-Up Nears
July 1, 2057: Pasco – It took him a week or so to settle back into baseball, but the Bikini Krill’s second-round selection in the recent draft has gotten settled down in AAA and looks to everyone like he might just be playing on the atoll sooner rather than later. After one hit in his first sixteen professional at bats, Pedro Jimenez is 28 for his last 72, which if our calculus is right puts him at .389 for those 24 games. That total includes 11 doubles.
“I’m feeling good,” Jimenez said after the team’s last game, a 1-0 win over Gotham in which he went 2-4 with one of those doubles. “I hear everyone saying I’m going up, and to be fair I heard that the day I was drafted. But I know the team has a couple of pretty good catchers up there right now, and I’ve got work to do with the glove. Whenever they want me, though, I’m right here.”
It is true that Jimenez’s glove needs considerable work, but some are looking at the left-handed bat and thinking that one of the two existing catchers (Jorge Contreras and Manuel Hernandez, both Rule 5 acquisitions) could well manage to be a defensive replacement if Jimenez came up now. The Contreras/Hernandez combo is performing well enough behind the plate that they have combined for 1.4 WAR so far, which is pretty fair if you’re into high-falutin’ metrics like that. On the other hand, they’ve combined for a pretty ugly OPS+ of 65, which is another of those complicated things that saber guys like to point to. And it’s not like they’ve done a lot to control the running game. Of the 61 runners who have attempted to steal, only 14 have been thrown out, a WTO rate of roughly 23%.
Will we see Jimenez up before the end of the year?
We’re guessing the answer is “yes.” But, really, the right question is whether that arrival will be before September.
July 1, 2057: Pasco – It took him a week or so to settle back into baseball, but the Bikini Krill’s second-round selection in the recent draft has gotten settled down in AAA and looks to everyone like he might just be playing on the atoll sooner rather than later. After one hit in his first sixteen professional at bats, Pedro Jimenez is 28 for his last 72, which if our calculus is right puts him at .389 for those 24 games. That total includes 11 doubles.
It is true that Jimenez’s glove needs considerable work, but some are looking at the left-handed bat and thinking that one of the two existing catchers (Jorge Contreras and Manuel Hernandez, both Rule 5 acquisitions) could well manage to be a defensive replacement if Jimenez came up now. The Contreras/Hernandez combo is performing well enough behind the plate that they have combined for 1.4 WAR so far, which is pretty fair if you’re into high-falutin’ metrics like that. On the other hand, they’ve combined for a pretty ugly OPS+ of 65, which is another of those complicated things that saber guys like to point to. And it’s not like they’ve done a lot to control the running game. Of the 61 runners who have attempted to steal, only 14 have been thrown out, a WTO rate of roughly 23%.
Will we see Jimenez up before the end of the year?
We’re guessing the answer is “yes.” But, really, the right question is whether that arrival will be before September.
| LVL | Player Name | POS | B | T | OVR | POT | Con P | Gap P | Pow P | Eye P | AvK P | Con | Gap | Pow | Eye | AvK |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-AAA | Pedro Jiménez | C | L | R | 50 | 50 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 5 |
| Source | Age | Ht | Wt | SPD | STE | RUN | CAB | CAR | IFR | IFE | IFA | TDP | OFR | OFE | OFA | |
| DR57.2 | 24 | 6'0" | 205 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 2 |