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| Don't even think you'll see Asche…. |
Tonight at the IronPigs game, we saw Joe Savery, Mike Stutes, and Jake Diekman all throw scoreless innings in a 14-5 win. This prompted my buddy Drew to ask why these guys are down, and B.J. Rosenberg is up. I suppose the company line is that Rosenberg is stretched out to be a long man. That's fine, but it's not like he was an overly effective starter in AAA, his ERA was 4.30. I'm not even sure he's an upgrade on Valdes, or that we need a long-man all that bad to begin with. For that matter, I think it matters less who wins out amongst fringe major league arms for the seventh job than the fact that the Phillies have a bullpen half full of them.
This wasn't the only incident of this kind of debate tonight. Why not bring up Darin Ruf? Well, I happen to be in the pro-Ruf crowd, but do you think bringing him up is going to totally turn the fortunes of this team around? He's hit decently well in AAA ball, but decently well doesn't translate into Albert Pujols the way some people imagine. Do I think he's provide needed pop, sure, but where would he play? How well would he play there? These aren't easy questions.
Fans always want to see the best talent, even if only by marginal standards, up with the real club, playing real games. I understand that. What fans have to understand is that this won't change the season that much, and Ruben Amaro has other concerns. Sometimes that higher-ceiling prospect has a flaw in his game that could be exposed in the majors, and needs more work first. Sometimes bringing up that prospect could cause a playing-time issue that diminishes the value of a veteran the GM would like to trade away for something. Sometimes they know a prospect isn't as good as the stats say. Having Ruf up for 200-300 plate appearances is probably not going to either increase his trade value, or save the season. Sure, he may have more power than say John Mayberry Jr., but Mayberry is out of options, and plays better defense, both of which are concerns to a GM. You can say Ruf is better than Mayberry, and I may agree with that evaluation, but show me the difference that makes it worth it to have Ruf sitting instead of playing, to DFA Mayberry, and to give up the defense. If you can't clearly quantify, or the difference isn't crazy obvious, there's no reason to make the move, right now. Would I do the move? Yeah, I would. Is it possible that there are concerns that I don't know enough to share with the front office that cause them to have a different view? Yeah.
This is going to be a concern all year. There are talents in the upper minors, guys like Cesar Hernandez, Cody Asche, Darin Ruf, Jesse Biddle, and others, who fans will want to bring up to the big league club as that club continues to struggle in different areas. The odds are that we won't see many, or any, of them before September. It's just as possible that next season, with these guys possibly on the roster, that fans will lament the guys we let leave before them. This is the "Johnny-come-lately" nature that we all have naturally as fans, and need to fight. Just as bad as you want to see these guys come through the door instead of the "AAAA" guys like Rosenberg and Cloyd, you have to try to not get mad when they're going through their growing pains later. We've went through this with Dom Brown, and tonight he hit his club leading 8th homer. Is he perfect, or complete yet? No, but he's about the only player so far this season who has shown any kind of upside or future potential that we can be excited by. There's a good chance that next season we watch he and Freddy Galvis start and continue to blossom, while some of these young guys people want to see come up. Just realize that patience is a virtue, both now and later.
