| 16 March 2010
The M’s cut six more today, sending out OF Ezequiel Carrera to Tacoma and optioning 2B Dustin Ackley, RHPs Danny Cortes, Ricky Orta, and Anthony Varvaro, and LHP Edward Paredes to West Tenn. We are now down to 45 in camp, with 32 on roster and 13 off it. If you’ve noticed something strikingly different about today’s cuts, you aren’t alone.
Carrera, 22, did nothing to hurt himself by hitting .364/.467/.455 in his eleven at-bats. If anything, it supports the fact that he led the Southern League and came in third for the entire minor leagues in on-base percentage for a reason. The Tacoma outfield suddenly gets a lot more interesting merely because he’s around. There are reasons why you’re not going to see him on prospect lists, such as his lack of power and the fact that he plays defense on a good but not elite level, but a good ’10 season could get him on a few lists, with or without the power.
Ackley, 22, actually does have a Baseball-Reference page despite there being nothing on it yet. The big thing for him in camp was that everyone was praising of his abilities to adjust and get better day-by-day and the second base position, which was entirely new to him. They would probably have been nice either way, but I’m willing to take the fact that we’re not enduring the platitudes of “oh, it just takes time, like it would for anyone else” to be something of a good sign. As the hitting went, we did get the trope of “he put the ball in play”, which is a nice way of saying we gave him 19 at-bats and he hit .158/.227/.263, but only struck out twice (and walked the same number of times). Perhaps we were secretly harboring some flighty hope about him coming to the major leagues without ever logging any official time in the minors, but alas it was not to be.
Cortes, recently 23, will get his third season starting in double-A, which is not good, let’s say. Also not good was the allowing four runs on five hits, including a home run in an inning and a third. What is good is the radar gun readings for him, which had him hitting 96 a couple of times, and all the other factors going in on him. Cortes has made a startling amount of progress in terms of his offerings since turning pro and seems at times to be thisclose to putting things together. There is, at the moment, no compelling reason to say this will be the one year he does it and he’s going to be gangbusters from here on out, when he’s been languishing so far, but I’m hopeful for something, and perhaps irrationally so.
Orta, 25, had eight strikeouts and no walks in Venezuela this winter over eight innings. He also gave up two runs on seven hits, with a home run mixed in. I don’t know that he’s as good as he seemed to be in West Tenn last year because he hardly had any hits drop in against him. Nor would I think that his spring training line of two runs in an inning and two-thirds on five hits, a hit batter, two walks, and a K would be representative. He’s another source of intrigue at this point.
Varvaro, 25, is another fellow to watch this season because he had major command issues all of his career and then suddenly got to Arizona for the Fall League and didn’t. His walk rate his first two seasons in the minors was four per nine, not good for any pitcher, and it was six his first year in High Desert before they converted him to relief last year and it jumped to seven. This is a bad trend. But then in Arizona it suddenly dropped to two per nine, albeit in 13.1 innings and suddenly I’m quite interested. More spaghetti for our bullpen consumption in the event that it’s possible that he can sustain it.
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