Writings on baseball by Matt Barnard and Dan Stein.

Tony is free!
 
It's been awhile, and my GM winter-to-date project is all but dead. It's a fair amount of work to do each of them - it'd be one thing if I'd been keeping up all along, and perhaps that's a project for next year - and with virtually no response, it hardly seems worthwhile. Dan's been regaling us all with some tales of his exploits down in Florida, and I trust he'll have more for all of us when he gets back to Buffalo (which I believe will happen later today). We're getting down to the end of Spring Training now, and are just a week and part of a day away from baseball...which is pretty great. Also pretty great is the news today that my boy of boys, Tony Womack has been freed from the godless, soul-sucking prison that is the Boston Red Sox organization.

St. Louis Cardinals get: Tony Womack.
Boston Red Sox get: Matt Duff.

Realistically, this probably means more to Matt Barnard sitting at his computer in Cambridge, Massachusetts than it does to just about anybody else (save the Womack and Duff families and close friends) - Womack wasn't likely to have a significant role on the Red Sox this year, though it's possible he might have won a job as a backup infielder to open the season with Nomar Garciaparra likely out. As much as I love watching Tony and it pains me to say it, his lack of job security is well deserved, as he's been a pretty atrocious player over the last couple of years. That said, it's not like the Cardinals have a bunch of world beaters at second base in Marlon Anderson and Bo Hart, so Tony may yet get a shot at some playing time and at bats in St. Louis, which is probably more than you could've said for him in Boston. Tony LaRussa is already saying he'll use Womack at second, third, short and in the outfield, so it looks like the team's weaknesses will be Tony's potential gain. And he'll be in a far more palatable shade of red. Of course, he'll need to be healthy to realize any of this, and he's being evaluated in Jupiter at the team's Spring Training facility today. He's apparently way ahead of schedule recovering from offseason Tommy John surgery, and could be back before the original expected date (sometime in May).

As for the other party in this trade, I don't know much about Matt Duff. He pitched 5.2 innings with the Cardinals in 2002 (walking 8), and that's it at the major league level. He'll be 29 this season and has been pitching in the minors since being signed by the Padres (as an undrafted free agent) out of the University of Mississippi in 1997, so he's got a pretty extensive track record. He looks like a right handed short relief pitcher who strikes out better than a man per 9 innings, with a higher walk rate than you'd like. I don't really see where there's a place for him in a bullpen as good as the Red Sox have, but he should be a nice fit in Pawtucket.
posted by VZW Watcher at 3:50 PM -