Sixteen Days To Go
Like a lot of you, I’m itching for the season to start. It’s 16 days until Opening Day, both minors and majors. I’ve put my trips and plans into spreadsheets, created color-coded calendars (above), but the waiting isn’t over yet.
I’m thankful for Steve Lombardozzi still being in camp with the big boys, because it gives me a semblance of a premise to write something from day-to-day and keep the site from going stale. But it’s not quite the daily ritual of cherry-picking the box scores for the “News & Notes,” the fun of writing up “Last Night In,” (mostly Woodbridge, but as it says in the footer I try to see the guys on the road [insert cleat-chaser joke here] in Hagerstown, Harriburg, and elsewhere when I can), and once we get a couple weeks in, the weekly feature of “Good, Bad, and Interesting.”
With Bryce Harper’s departure, and the semi-surprising announcement that the club plans to groom him for CF, most of the focus is going to be on what I thought it would be going a month ago: the bench, the #5 starter, the fringes of the bullpen. Injuries are a factor, too, but mostly it means that some of “our guys” are going to get the pleasure of riding the bus to road games as a “just in case” pitcher or to play a couple of innings on defense, perhaps getting an at-bat or two.
It all starts back up tonight against the Mets, the penultimate night game of the 14 left on the schedule. The game is broadcast on MLB.tv and on tape delay for the MLB Network at 3 a.m. tomorrow.
Lombo is batting leadoff tonight! Desmond HAS to be hearing footsteps now.
They will probably keep Lombo down in AAA until the end of April to delay his free agency.
I doubt that. Even if he wins the starting 2B position, Lombo would not likely remain a starter for more than a couple of years with Rendon coming up the chain behind him. He’s not the superstar kind of player for which his free agency clock is much of a concern. His dad, in fact, did not even manage to accumulate six years of service time.
Assuming, of course, they move Rendon from 3B or SS. There’s chatter about latter, which isn’t as far-fetched as it seemed a few weeks ago.
I was just kidding in light of all the you-know-who chatter.
Luke, when do we start to hear rosters in the minors?
April 2-4 (Monday-Wednesday). Be patient w/ me because I’ll be in transit from N.E. in the first week of April (visit family, kids’ spring break).