what's on my mind grapes?

We’re coming in close to the deadline here, but it has been a busy weekend – a little time at The Prog (special shout-out to Suege, whose disposable income is exceeded only by his generosity, or maybe vice-versa), a little spring cleaning, some family commitments, plus some four-hour games too riveting to allow multitasking. But if ever there were a time when I could blog intensely about baseball, it’s now, when the Red Sox are making like Adam Lambert and looking so far beyond the competition that… wait, an American Idol analogy? That’s the best I can do?

Clearly, writing everything but this intro drained me, and that’s even though I lack enough conviction in any of my reflections to make a prediction this week; I’m as worn down as the Yankees’ bullpen.  Hey, that’s more like it…!

Underrated Cut (Or, “This Is As Pointless As Not Bothering To Pick Up The Hundred-Dollar Bill You Just Dropped In A Puddle”): Not surprisingly, the Washington Nationals aren’t the brightest team out there. In the case of reliever Saul Rivera, their bad luck saved them from their stupidity; after being optioned down, Rivera returned to Washington when fellow reliever Joe Beimel ended up on the disabled list. There’s no question that Rivera has had a terrible year – with two home runs and as many walks as strikeouts in under eight innings, he’s hurt the Nationals tremendously. But sending him to the minors was a premature move; after all, his problems have come in a very small sample size, and he plays for the Nationals. Rivera was a solid late-innings guy in the past two seasons, and while he is too old to turn into anything more than that, he has plenty of value to a franchise starved for pitching. Instead, the hapless club seems to prefer retreads like Kip Wells and Julian Tavarez, or respectively failed and iffy prospects like Mike Hinckley and Garrett Mock – whose walks and strikeouts are no better than Rivera’s this year. That the team immediately recalled Rivera, whose bad outcomes may stem largely from a .481 BABIP, after placing Beimel on the DL would seem to validate that there isn’t an injury issue at hand, and that they simply became impatient and thought Rivera wasn’t one of their seven best relievers. It’s very little wonder that they’re baseball’s losingest team right now, and I can only hope that a club like San Diego is inquiring about Rivera at a low price.

Underrated Addition (Or, “Incompetent People Haven’t Turned To A Choice This Obvious Since Donald Rumsfeld Was Secretary of Defense”): There weren’t many players changing teams this week, so I’ll highlight Brian Bannister’s return to the big-league club in Kansas City as a very good, if very overdue, move. While the Royals’ pitching has been more than a little surprising in its quality this year, there was no reason to keep Horacio Ramirez as a fifth starter when the 28-year-old Bannister was performing adequately at Triple-A Omaha. Bannister had significant home run problems last year, but his solid rookie year in 2007 gives me reason to think he can still be a nice back-of-the-rotation arm. At the very least, he’s a safer bet than the perpetually usefulness-challenged Ramirez – and in a division with so many contenders, even one win of improvement could make a difference if the Royals somehow keep getting by with such a weak offense. (For the record, I still scoff at their status as a trendy postseason dark horse, but with Zack Greinke getting help from Gil Meche and Kyle Davies [!] at the front of the rotation, it’s not as absurd a concept as it was a month ago.)

Why Do You Still Have A Job? (Or, “They Need This Guy Like Kat Dennings Needs A Tan”) The Javier Lopez Award for Excellence in Futility could very easily be called “Giant of the Week,” and I was sorely tempted to just give it to San Francisco GM Brian Sabean. But because monumentally bad ballplayers can quickly become non-issues, I’ll err in favor of spotlighting one of several deserving “baseball players:” first baseman Travis Ishikawa. Ishikawa played seven seasons in the Giants’ farm system, and rarely showed much reason to think of him as a top prospect. It’s not that he has no record of hitting (2008 was a career year), but that his defensive deficiencies limit him to playing first (if that; at this point, he may not cut it even there). As a first baseman, reasonable hitting expectations from his minor league record would make him an awful starter… and his 2009 year has been terrible beyond any expectations. In 42 at-bats, he has managed just nine hits – and only two that weren’t singles. His on-base percentage is the worst among MLB first basemen with over 5 at-bats, and his slugging percentage is in the bottom five. With his thirteen strikeouts to one walk, his average on balls in play stands at a very reasonable .310, giving no reason to believe this dreadful start is just bad luck. With no homers and so little plate discipline, there’s no explanation other than “he’s playing horribly,” and no excuse for the Giants not to simply sign a veteran until Ishikawa shows that he can come close to replacement level.

Question of the Week: Is Erik Bedard back? Yes. Bedard missed most of his first season in Seattle thanks to shoulder problems, but through four starts in 2009, he is every bit the ace for whom they believed they traded several very good young players. With more than 10 strikeouts per nine innings and just more than a tenth as many walks, Bedard has a perfectly sustainable BABIP of .294. The only way in which he has been lucky is the low rate of home runs on fly balls, but even with a normalized rate, Bedard should complement Felix Hernandez very well at the front of the rotation. There is, of course, the caveat of small sample size, but Bedard’s dominance is as valid as anything one can conclude in April. His value doesn’t absolve former Mariners GM Bill Bavasi of a bad trade – the thirty-year-old is heading into free agency, and came at far too high a cost of younger, cost-controlled talent – but gives new GM Jack Zduriencik an All-Star caliber arm to keep or deal as he sees fit.

Player of the Week (Or, “I Haven’t Seen Anything This Hard-Hitting Since That CNN Reporter Showed How Clueless Those Tea Partiers Were”): It should be noted that this award is by no means an objective reflection on who has had the best week, but rather a spotlight on someone who has made a large impression this week. Objective measures of hot weeks are the sort of unequivocal facts that have made me hesitant to blog about baseball, so while it’s hardly the best analytical method, it’s nice to just take a player who may not be getting his due and give him, in my tiny corner of cyberspace, that due.

Braves catcher David Ross was limited to eight at-bats with the Red Sox last year, and because I felt he was shortchanged, I’m pleased to see him hitting this year – not to spite Boston, who are doing quite nicely with a resurgent Jason Varitek, but because he is too good a player to stay so unnoticed. While, like everything here, it comes with the caveat that it’s a very small sample, his Atlanta career has gone amazingly well so far. In just eighteen at-bats, he has four extra-base hits, including two homers, and has walked six times to just four strikeouts. There’s no way he continues his .417 BABIP and posts a full-season OPS well over 1.000, but with Brian McCann on the DL, Ross may finally get the playing time to establish himself as one of baseball’s best backup backstops.