We have already discussed Justin Verlander extensively. What's worth noting here is the end of the Blake Sabol Era. Sabol was a guy FZ picked up in a Rule 5 Draft and obviously had high hopes for. He was a disciplined hitter with power, batted lefthanded and had catching experience. He could nice bat off the bench and an emergency catcher which is like being able to carry 3 catchers and gives the manager far more in-game options than if you have just one backup catcher.
Sabol seemed like a super-nice kid and gave fans a few thrills with long home runs which seemed to come in high leverage situations. While no Buster Posey behind the plate, he seemed like an adequate catcher. But he never really found traction and his game seemed to regress both at the plate and behind it and he really couldn't field even LF adequately either. The last straw seemed to be last season during a brief callup when Tom Murphy got hurt and he was absolutely terrible defensively not only not getting his immediate job done but messing up the pitchers too. Whatever FZ thought of Sabol up to then didn't really matter because Bob Melvin was not having him behind the plate ever again. Curt Casali was brought back and despite not hitting a lick or throwing out runners, he got the pitchers comfortable with his receiving and settled them down.
I'm not sure where Blake Sabol goes from here but I wish him the best.
No comments:
Post a Comment