Indians bench coach Sandy Alomar is grateful for the December 1989 trade in which the Padres shipped him to Cleveland with Carlos Baerga and Chris James for Joe Carter, Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. In 1988, Baseball America named Alomar its Minor League Player Of The Year after a strong year in Triple-A Las Vegas, but he was blocked by Benito Santiago, so the Padres sent him back to Triple-A, and Alomar won the Minor League Player Of The Year award a second time. When the Padres finally dealt him to Cleveland, Alomar says, he "didn't know much about the Indians, I just knew it was the major leagues." But he had an opportunity there, and in 1990 he won the AL Rookie Of The Year award. Alomar spent 11 seasons with the Indians as a player, then returned to the Indians as a coach in 2010. Here are more notes from around the majors.
- Phillies GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. shouldn't wait to address the team's problems, Phil Sheridan of the Philadelphia Inquirer argues. "What they can't do is let a handful of spare-part relievers continue to work themselves into dubious shape while the season slow-drips away," Sheridan says, adding that there's a fine line between "maintaining perspective" and doing nothing while a season comes apart. It's early in the year to be making big trades (or drawing radical conclusions from the season thus far), but Sheridan suggests the Phillies might make do in the meantime by cycling through some relievers currently at Triple-A.
- GM Jed Hoyer says the Cubs are honing in on potential choices with the second overall pick in the upcoming June draft, Jesse Rogers of ESPNChicago.com reports. "We are narrowing it down," says Hoyer. "We haven’t narrowed it down to hitter vs. pitcher yet. We’ve narrowed it down to a group. We’ll meet next week and decide if that group is big enough (or) if we need to include more players in that group." Stanford pitcher Mark Appel appears to be in that group, along with Georgia high school outfielders Austin Meadows and Clint Frazier.
