Wait, that was him? I thought they were trying out Mulder’s good arm. If nothing else, be glad that they shut Swamp Gas down when they did; Reyes needs some time to work things out, and to prove that he’s a better bet for the rotation than Marquis.
Meanwhile: September call-ups, O how I love thee. Had this game taken place in July I would have switched over to one of the many Law and Order reruns circa the third inning, but as things were I had Nelson/Narveson sightings to look forward to.
John Nelson takes a big, big swing and he’s an infielder; it’s good to see in terms of variety, but given the AAA results–.219/.291/.411–he’s not going to be the shining example to inspire La Jocketty to invest in infielders with isolated powers over .100.
Narveson looked like a basic lefty back-of-the-rotation type; he threw strikes, he kept his fastball from 88-92, and his curveball was, variously, a sterling strikeout pitch and somewhere in the left-field bleachers. Just from looks, his upside is Mark Mulder 2005, which is definitely not a bad thing. With Mark Mulder 2007 looking ever-more-likely to be a St. Louis bargain by default, it would be the best case scenario if another, more reliable free-agent signing squeezed him out of the rotation. But if it didn’t, God forbid, or if Wainwright ends up shoehorned permanently into the pen, he’s a more interesting option than Pondre the Giant.
And then there was that Japanese second baseman they trotted out; he showed good range around the bag and a solid pivot, but I don’t know if his bat is strong enough to keep him in the bigs. Seriously, is second base a legitimate possibility for The Gooch? He certainly looked competent out there. And if he can play it in the same way Spiezio can, or the way that John Mabry stood at third, he might have one remaining advantage over future fourth outfielder/Real American Hero Skip Schumaker.
Today we get Marquis/Webb, a matchup which Dan McLaughlin described charitably as a battle between two sinkerballers. For those of you keeping score, Marquis Marq’s G/F ratio is now 1.16, about where it was during his days in Atlanta. Of course, he struck batters out in Atlanta; does it surprise anybody else that he once whiffed seven batters per nine innings? Does it surprise anybody that he once whiffed seven batters?
