Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

 
Ronnie "the other" Belliard signs with the Rockies
I like this a lot. There's not a whole lot to cover at the moment (I don't really care that Pete Rose is being considered for the Canadian Hall of Fame), so it allows me to get at least a little bit excited about minor league contracts being signed by second basemen in their late 20s. Right now, the likely starting second baseman for the Rockies on Opening Day is Brent Butler, and that's pretty crappy. I'm not going to get into much detail (as you can easily check just how crappy the first 498 plate appearances of his career have been here) about his numbers, but they're definitely not what you'd like to see from an everyday player. Ron Belliard, while far from a lock, is a guy who has shown us in the past that he can perform at a pretty high level. If we look back at the first two full seasons of his career in Milwaukee, he posted lines of .295/.379/.429 in 531 PAs (in 1999, at age 24) and then .263/.354/.389 in 667 PAs (in 2000, at age 25). His 2001 wasn't too shabby either, as he slugged .453 over 410 PAs. His 2002 however, was really horrible, and he's been replaced (probably in part due to injury problems which have plagued him every year except 2000) at second in Milwaukee by Eric Young. Whatever. I don't know how much of a shot he's going to get in Colorado, but given who's in front of him, I'd hope he'll get at least a fair crack. His OBP has steadily been dropping for the last few seasons, but there's got to be some hope that he can get back to somewhere near his 1999-2000 form and be a big improvement for the Rockies at second base. Very low risk signing...nice work here by Dan O'Dowd.

Marlon Anderson to the Devil Rays on the cheap
Am I the only one who thinks Marlon Anderson can be a useful player? He's certainly not going to make anyone forget about Rogers Hornsby, but he's done some adequate work in the major leagues, and this signing costs effectively nothing (it's apparently $600,000 with bonuses that can make it worth up to $800,000) for the Rays. He's nothing more than mediocre defensively at second (could he play somewhere else? he's got no major league experience elsewhere), but he's no worse than Brent Abernathy. Manager Lou Piniella has stated that, "he will compete at second base during spring training and we will move him around to try to make him more than a one-position player." Of course Abernathy, being the younger guy by several years (but not that young anymore, he'll be 25), is someone you'd prefer to see succeed over the haul...but he really had an abysmal year in 2002. Abysmal to the tune of .242/.288/.311 in 504 plate appearances...and a 60 OPS+. Anderson's career .266/.313/.383 line isn't spectacular by any means, but if you threw him out there instead of Abernathy last season, you'd have fielded a better team. It's not as if the Rays are teeming with young second basemen and Anderson's taking away opportunities from them...he's a decent, cheap veteran signing, the kind that is far less detrimental to Tampa than some of their previous ventures (Castilla being the most obvious).
posted by VZW Watcher at 1:24 PM -