Odds and Ends: Ivan Rodriguez, Hall, Street

The comments at the end of the Hall article are good stuff. Hall has played bad defense and has been horrible against righties. He should be happy they just called up Branyan to platoon, rather than call up Gamel to play 3rd or move Braun back to 3rd. Yeah, both play atrocious defense. But Hall has been pretty bad and his hitting has stunk. They moved him back to 3rd to improve their defense and if they are still getting below-average defense, they might as well try someone there who can hit.

I'm not saying the Brewers should have done this (they shouldn't), but Hall needs to swallow his pride and either start hitting or get ready to be DFA'd. He's starting to look like Brandon Inge with much worse defense. That is not a good thing and its not something other teams are anxious to acquire.

hall's defense has been atrocious, both from what i've read and what i saw this weekend against the nats.

aa, maybe he's starting to finally hit, but he'd better do it soon. you have to either play good D or be able to hit to hang in this league for too long. he's doing neither right now.

nor did he hit much last year, with a 740 OPS (254/315/425/740 isn't very impressive offensively). his HR power fell off significantly last year (14 after 35 the season before and his OPS dropped 128 points). so his issues offensively this season aren't new, they're a continuation of last season.

it's better than last year, not on pace for the 35 the year before. if he gets the same ABs as he did in 06, he'll have 27 HRs. and 25 2Bs. and he's not injured this year, so that injury doesn't explain this year's loss of power. or this year's sub-300 OBP.

like i said, if he starts to hit and/or stops sucking defensively, it'll take care of itself. the solution to the problem lies within bill hall, not the brewers management. he can make the decision easy for them. it's not like he has a long track record of performance that tells them to be patient. he has one breakout year (06) and one good year (05).

The Indians signed 2 minor league placeholders today ~ SS Jorge Velandia and OF Todd Linden; both of which were sent to AAA. A trade is probably about to be anounced, with the Middle Infielder and Corner OFer being brought in indicating it must include Josh Barfield (or less likely Asdrubal Cabrera) and one of Gutierrez, Francisco, Choo, Snyder or Cooper…

No need to sign the MiL depth otherwise, as the team was stacked with players at Buffalo…