7:03pm: Dan Barbarisi of The Providence Journal reports that Frandsen has in fact been claimed by the Angels. It's believed that he's been assigned to their Triple-A affiliate.
THURSDAY, 2:49pm: It appears that the Angels claimed Frandsen off waivers, based on this tweet from outfielder Chris Pettit.
WEDNESDAY, 2:48pm: The Red Sox designated infielder Kevin Frandsen for assignment to make room for Alan Embree, tweets Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports. Frandsen had been acquired from the Giants on March 26th for a player to be named later or cash. He played 17 games at Pawtucket, tallying 71 plate appearances.
Frandsen, 28 in May, hit .295/.352/.438 at Triple A last year while playing all four infield positions. Three years ago, Baseball America viewed Frandsen as a "solid No. 2 hitter" and potential starting second baseman. However, he was derailed by a ruptured Achilles tendon in the spring of '08. Back in March, Henry Schulman if the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about Frandsen's frustrations and his new attitude adopted while playing winter ball.
He might be someone the Bluejays should take a chance on, since they are thin on SS prospects.
based on the (admittedly few) times I saw him in Spring Training, I don’t think his arm is really good enough to be a legitimate SS. Can’t really see him sticking as anything but a 2b.
He’s more of a utility guy. He can play 3B, SS, 2B, OF. But you wouldn’t want him at any full time.
Kevin is a AAAA player….kills it in minors, does nothing in the bigs. He’s a gritty gamer, but just doesn’t have that “extra” that makes it in the show.
Don’t know why they don’t just take Willie Bloomquist off of KC’s hands and pay his 1.7M salary, then resign him after the season to another high, 1.5M or so salary and have a capable guy that can play 7 positions and run. Then, no useless guys like Billy Hall, Tug Hulet, Franderson etc.. to mess with and Bloomquist is a valuable guy off of the bench. He’s of more use than Ortiz is at least.
Hall is actually having a better season at the plate than Bloomquist. While Hall hasn’t exhibited the ability to hit his way out of a paper bag, he’s actually carrying a respectable .355 OBP in a larger sample size than Bloomquist (Who doesn’t seem to know what a walk is thus far). He’s also essentially free. Bloomquist has been fielding better than Hall, but not enough to justify dropping a guy who’s costing them essentially nothing for a guy who’s making about a million more than you should be paying a utility guy with mediocre ability. Plus, Hall’s been showing an inexplicable natural ability to play the wall in a decent manner.
It becomes even less of a potential solution when you take into account how close the Sox are to topping the luxury tax threshold. The Sox aren’t going to risk going over for a guy who’s not going to see too many at bats.
pretty sure the Sox passed the CBT limit a while back… or have at least conceded that by the end of the year they will be over.
Last I checked, they checked in just under, thanks in no small part to the Bill Hall deal. They were pretty much just over and shedding Kotchman’s salary and bringing back Hall for nothing, they came in at a couple million under. At this point, they’re only going to break the tax threshold for an impact player, not a utility guy. Any move, at this point, is going to have the tax on it and that $1.7 MM for a utility guy could very quickly turn into $2.5 MM for a utility guy.
Not knocking you on the salary cap, just saying that Bloomquist is a proven utility guy over the course of his career that can actually play 7 positions at a fair level and can be used to PR even. Free or not, Hall just flat out cannot hit, cannot play SS that he is on the roster for as a B/U beside other positions and as you also mentioned, basic utlity duties.
Until Lowrie gets back, the Sox have sad lack of depth with Sanchez, Hulet, Hall and Franderson types and Bloomquist and Amezaga are about to of the best overall types around. i would love for Boston to just go out and pay one of those a decent salary one time instead of fooling around with these discard types year after year.
First of all, I’m not sure Lowrie is EVER gonna be back. Of course it wasn’t his fault for getting mono but the team just doesn’t have that much patience for him anymore and he yas yet to prove he can get healthy. He also hasn’t even resumed baseball activities as far as I know. Also, while I’m REALLY not a Bill Hall fan…I don’t think you should call Hulet useless. I for one would really like to see the Tugger get called up at some point. Dude straight murdered the ball all spring and had more RBIs then any other player on the team. Sure, it was just ST. But considering how poorly we have swung the bats so far I woudn’t forget about the Tugger just yet.
I wouldn’t mind the Mets investing in his services. Higher ceiling than Alex Cora, eh?
To be fair, my grandmother has a higher ceiling than Alex Cora.
Wow. I thought Embree had retired by now. He hasn’t been good in like 2 years… I seriously thought this was a post left over from like 2007 or something.
Embree is horrible, he has been hiding in the NL for a while and now his ego thinks he’s good again. He is not! Any aging NL pitcher trying for a comeback in the AL should reconsider.
Hey, somebody’s gotta take mopup duty.
Which, I assume, means that Schoeneweis is not long for the Sox with Matsuzaka coming back. At this point, I just want him off the team so I’ll never had to try to spell his name again.
If the O’s were smart they’d nab him and bench izturis
brandon wood, figure it out!
In light of Wood’s recent production (8 hits in his last 18 AB), thats not likely.