White Sox pitcher Danny Farquhar, who suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage during a game last month, was released from the hospital yesterday, and went to Guaranteed Rate Field today to meet with his teammates.
Farquhar’s neurosurgeon says that he should be able to pitch again, although not until 2019 at the earliest.
Not so fast. Any longtime fan can name a number of guys who they couldn’t wait to see come up to the majors but who proved not to be major league players (how’s Yoan Moncada doing lately?). IOW, as our forefathers put it, “Can da bum hit da coive?”
Well, he’s 23 years old and slashing .263/.359/.509, so pretty darn good.
It’s exciting when players still in their teens make the big leagues. I can only think of a few, like Bryce Harper, Jose Rijo, Ken Griffey Jr. and Doc Gooden. I’m sure there are others, but it’s rare. A-Rod played 17 games with Seattle at age 18, then 48 more the following season. His age 20 season was a monster, MVP caliber campaign.
So yeah, bring up Guerrero. If he looks good in his first few seasons, the Blue Jays can try to extend him through his first few years of free agency a la Mike Trout.
Moncada is doing quite well. Still strikes out too much, but crushes the ball when he makes contact.
G AB H 2B 3B HR RBI R BB K SB CS AVG OBP SLG OPS
29 114 30 8 1 6 15 17 17 49 4 0 .263 .359 .509 .868
I’d be surprised if Vlad isn’t very good very quickly in the majors. Prospects aren’t really that unpredictable if you know enough about them. At least not that much more unpredictable than established major leaguers.
The one barrier to brining up Guerrero of course is that there is no obvious place for him to play.
Toronto desperately needs a real DH, but I don’t think they want a 19-year-old not playing the field (and they have other guys who could replace Kendrys Morales, anyway, if they could summon up the guts to release Morales.) As much as I am skeptical of Guerrero’s future as a third baseman, there is obvious value in having him play some position, even if it means in the long run he ends up in the outfield or at first base, and a mediocre third baseman who hits like Frank Robinson ain’t the worst thing you could be stuck with. But they have a pretty good third baseman already, you might have heard of him.
Moncada is rather decidedly a fine young major league player, so that’s an odd example. He also was not really comparable to Guerrero as a youngster. Moncada didb’t reach AA until he was 21, and did not annihilate it the way Guerrero has.
I am not YET convinced Guerrero is that great just because it’s only been a month. If, however, he’s still putting up video game number in late June, it’s going to start becoming weird as to why a major league team has one of its five best hitters in AA. Sometimes a 19-year-old IS ready to contribute; the examples of Griffey Jr., Gooden, and Bryce Harper have been cited already, plus Andruw Jones made his debut at 19, Mike Trout at 19, Adrian Beltre at 19, Justin Upton just a few weeks before his 20th birthday, King Felix at 19, Gregg Jeffries at 19, Madison Bumgarner at 19, and going back a bit more, Fernando and Tim Raines at 19. Alex Rodriguez did okay for himself.
In modern times, actually, teenaged ballplayers have been disproportionately successful. Oh, they aren’t all Tim Raines and Ken Griffey Jr.; sometimes you get Melvin Nieves or Matt Riley. However, just eyebqalling the list of teenaged debuts over the last thirty years, the success rate is frnakly INCREDIBLE. Well over half the names became at least pretty good ballplayers; Justin Upton is an excellent player but almost half the teenaged debuts are better than him. (his brother Melvin is one of the ones who isn’t, but he had his moments.) I bet if you could list all 23-year-old debuts, not five percent of them would have turned out as good as Justin Upton.
Obviously, this doesn’t mean all prospects should be rushed to the majors before they can drink; this happens because super elite prospects like Griffey, A-Rod and Adrian Beltre just can’t be kept on the farm. You can’t justify keeping a guy in the minors if he’s a major league player right now. The fact that there is serious discussion of bringing up Guerrero, that there are major league scouts saying “He will hit in the majors now,” is damn interesting.
Troy Glaus?
Point is, he’s been looking good against early-season AA pitching, noted for its lack of quality breaking balls among other things. That’s nice and all, but still.
I know of one: Buffalo.
So far he’s been a good journeyman, not the guy who got people excitedly telling each other he’s The Number One Prospect In All Of Baseball.
Don’t you hate when you completely forget to turn on the game, and discover later that your team’s starting pitcher tossed a no-hitter?
I watched bits of it. I wish I’d seen more. :mad:
A full-game no-no. 99 pitches. The Big Maple was just blazing. His fastball was getting faster every inning.
Not many K’s but so efficient. Which means the rest of the M’s had his back.
I love it when that kind of thing happens.
ETA for interesting trivia: this is the first time in MLB history that a Canadian pitcher has tossed a no-hitter in Canada. Which is nice for Canadians, except for the Blue Jays. 
ETA2: More interesting trivia: third no-hitter this MLB season, and each in a different country: US, Mexico, and now Canada.
Article about it. Fox news, so please don’t read if that offends you, but it has the information I have here.
The A’s have called up Dustin Fowler. He came to the A’s last year as part of the Sonny Gray trade while he was still on the DL recovering from a horrible patellar tendon injury that he suffered during the 1st inning of his MLB debut last year with the Yankees. The injury occurred before he was able to get an at bat. Hopefully things go better for him this time around.
And, going back a few years further, Robin Yount was 18 when he joined the Brewers; he turned out OK, too.
David Clyde has left a message for you.
MLB.com actually picked Andrew Benintendi as their Number One Prospect in All of Baseball in 2017. Moncada was their Number Two Prospect in All of Baseball. Others may have reversed it, I don’t know, but Benintendi was at least as highly regarded.
Looks like Benintendi’s a better example for your argument anyway, at least so far this year: he’s a year older than Moncada but he trails Moncada by about 150 points in OPS this season, plus which Moncada seems to have a defensive edge. I believe you’re not big on WAR, but Fangraphs has Benintendi as barely above replacement right now (0.2) while Moncada is in the top 25 of position players with 1.3. Guess that makes Benintendi a sub-journeyman?
Certainly Moncada isn’t tearing up the league Mike Trout-style, but he’s been quite good.
A 23-year-old kid with a starting job who only plays one position isn’t a “journeyman.”
Journeyman means run of the mill quality.
Vlad Jr. doesn’t have a place in the Toronto lineup, you tell us. How is it that he’s the hottest shit in the system but there’s no one on a run of the mill lineup he can beat out?
Can Mike Trout be any better a human being? He just got a broken-bat base hit. The bat, as it shattered, hit both the catcher AND the umpire. As Trout is running to first, he’s turning around to apologize to and check on the two of them.
The legend grows.
As applied to the 23 year old Moncada, this is a joke, right?
How often does a team bat out of order?
I don’t know how often, but the Brewers did it in 2016, so I would guess a bit rarer than a triple play or no-hitter and much less rare than an unassisted triple play or perfect game.
Incidentally, Calloway said “Once they announce you, you can’t do anything.” If he noticed while Flores was at bat, he could have sent Cabrera up. If he noticed when Cabrera was batting, Flores would have been established as correct, and he could have sent Bruce up. You can replace an incorrect batter in those situations before they make an out or get on base without penalty.
For that matter, Cabrera could have taken off for third before time was called, and if a play had been made on him, that too would nullify the right to appeal.
So several things could have been done.