|
Nick Piecoro - NickPiecoro's Blog - azcentral.com
|
Nick Piecoro covers the Diamondbacks for The Arizona Republic. He blogs about them at azcentral.com. And he tweets with consistent inconsistency at twitter.com/nickpiecoro. Reach him at nick.piecoro@arizonarepublic.com.
|
-
Bell up, Ransom out; Roberts' new role; injury updates; farm report; & other stuff
That the Diamondbacks brought up Josh Bell and are giving them a chance to seize control of the third base job isn’t all that surprising. Not to me, anyway. They haven’t been getting much production out of third base, Bell has been crushing everything in sight for Triple-A Reno and he was once a highly regarded prospect. He still has the tools that made scouts regard him as such a few years ago.
The only thing that caught me off guard was that they decided to make room for Bell by designating Cody Ransom for assignment. Sure, Ransom hasn’t been great ...
read the rest of this post
-
D-Backs show no fear of Reno; Towers talks changes; & other stuff
The Diamondbacks are moving one of their top pitching prospects, Trevor Bauer, up to Triple-A Reno, thrusting him into the maw of the hitter’s haven known as the Pacific Coast League. Elevations are high and ballparks are small, and pitchers who post ERAs around 4.00 are generally considered to be doing pretty well for themselves.
Some clubs avoid sending their best pitching prospects there, jumping them straight from Double-A to the major leagues, the thinking being that guys could lose confidence or develop bad habits pitching in a severe offensive environment.
The Diamondbacks, by promoting Bauer, who will make his Triple-A debut ...
read the rest of this post
-
Catching up with Trevor Bauer; Young update; farm report; & other stuff
Trevor Bauer has been killing it in the minor leagues, posting eye-popping numbers for the Diamondbacks Double-A Mobile affiliate. Rarely does a day go by without someone asking on Twitter about when the Diamondbacks are expected to call him up from the minors.
I don’t know the answer to that question. Neither does Bauer. But, in a phone conversation this week, we had plenty of other things to talk about, including his dislike of ground balls, his walk total and how he’s getting by without his headphones.
***
Let’s start with general stuff: How do you think you’ve been throwing? How has your ...
read the rest of this post
-
Purpose pitches; Young's rehab; Drew update; Kemp to DL; & farm report
So none of what happened on Monday night was all that surprising: Ian Kennedy threw at Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw threw at Kennedy. A warning was issued. The Diamondbacks dugout seemed upset about the warning. The Diamondbacks denied it all after the game.
This is usually the way things work. Of course, usually they don’t say things like “Kershaw has a long swing, so we had to pitch him in,” which was what catcher Miguel Montero and Kennedy went with, much to our amusement. But denying throwing at someone is the standard protocol.
The most interesting question is whether this is over. It ...
read the rest of this post
-
Montero's market; the '09 draft; Drew slides; Gibson's Friday night; farm report; & other stuff
Apologies for being a few days late on this, but figured it should be addressed in some fashion: General Manager Kevin Towers said the other day that he is open to the idea of restarting negotiations on a multiyear deal with catcher Miguel Montero.
This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. In spring training, when we were told no talks were ongoing, the fact was, they were. And although they said they wanted to get everything taken care of before the season started, you might remember that five years ago, the Diamondbacks and Eric Byrnes said their talks were dead and ...
read the rest of this post
|
