Bingo Doc,
I've become convinced that The Cat is simply forcing a decision to be made on somebody else. There is NO WAY he isn't a Major League bat right now, and he's certainly no embarrasment with the glove.
You can send him down and secure that extra arb year, but even that is a two or three-week thing, and then you have the same decision to be made.
I just think it is obvious that the move is with Figgins but nobody is reporting smoke signals indicating such. We're determined to show him off in the hope that we can dump his next year's salary (we'll have to buy this year's no matter how well he performs).
So....minus a Figgins move, we can:
1. Trade Olivo and let the kid catch 120 games this year. That open's up a DH spot and The Cat is in the lineup.
2. DL Ryan. Figgins/Kawasaki/Seager play SS. Figgins never sees 3B again. If you keep Wells, too....then Figgins probably doesn't see CF. In this scenario, he's just an expensove maybe-utility player. Wait....never mind.
3. Send Seager to Tacoma. This only postpones the eventual decision as he's going to whack the ball all over down there and I hate messing with a kid who can play. He can play.
4. Keep 11 chuckers. Uh...this is only very short term as nobody goes with 11 for very long.
5. Abandon Carp or Smoak. Uh....no.
6. Mess around with Wells. Send him down. Let Figgins get some CF time and SS time and let him sniff 3B once in a great while. Or maybe you mess around with Saunders, which would be capital S stupid at this point.
7. Send down Catricala for a few seconds.
I've advocated #1, think #2 makes some sense, as well, and can live for a few seconds with #7, maybe.
But if you send Catricala down, you better know that you have a 20 game limit with Figgins and that he's G-O-N-E at that point....or you just require another decision then. So that decision needs to be made before you make the move.
I will not be surprised if we put Wells in Tacoma and we watch the Figgins debacle play out for a few weeks longer.
And all this occuring with Liddi also showing all the signs of being and a ready-for-prime-time-player right now.
Youth, it seems, must be served.
There is no way we get somebody to gobble up two years of Figgins. So really the cost of disposing of him immediately is one year's $7M.
Heck, it would be worth a good chunk of that in positive PR.
Doc, calculate how many WAR Catricala is worth right now. I'm pretty sure it is well north of $7M.
Does Dick Allen ring a bell?
We've got one of those.
moe
PS: A dump Figgins move really is an investment in both Catricala AND Montero, because is maximizes both of their PA's.
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