Top White Sox prospect Carlos Rodon will make his first career big league start on Saturday. Rodon has pitched from the pen in the early going, but will get a chance to take the hill to open the game due to the five-game suspension of Jeff Samardzija. It remains to be seen what the team’s plans are the rest of the way with their highly-touted rookie, who was taken in last year’s draft out of N.C. State, but there seems to be at least a chance that he could pitch himself into a starting role given the struggles the team has had at the back end of the rotation.
- Speaking of interesting Saturday starters, the Indians will purchase the contract of journeyman lefty Bruce Chen to face the Twins this weekend, MLB.com’s Jordan Bastian tweets. Chen inked a minor league deal with Cleveland and chose to stay with the organization rather than opting out when he did not make the Opening Day roster. The team will need to clear space on both its 40-man and 25-man rosters.
- Of broader concern for the Indians, GM Chris Antonetti and manager Terry Francona are facing their biggest challenge of their combined tenure, Paul Hoynes of the Plain Dealer explains. Expectations were high heading into the year, of course, and the club has roundly struggled thus far. The sense of urgency is evident, says Hoynes, as demonstrated by the team’s decision not to play center fielder Michael Bourn against lefties. As Hoynes rightly points out, the Bourn contract looked like a nice value when it was signed, but has hardly worked out for the Indians. Bourn has not only struggled offensively this year, but is not even providing the anticipated positive contribution in the field and on the bases. (Both UZR and DRS rate him as a negative in center over last year and this season’s early going.)
- Royals skipper Ned Yost says that he hopes outfielder Alex Rios will be back from his hand injury in about two weeks, per ESPN News Services. But the veteran just started swinging a bat again and does not have a precise timeline, per a tweet from Andy McCullough of the Kansas City Star. His replacements — Paulo Orlando and Jarrod Dyson — have actually been pretty good, at least if you buy into a short sample of defensive metrics. Both fWAR and rWAR value the pair at nearly one combined win above replacement.
Glad to see Chen getting another shot in the bigs.
for any team, particularly small market ones, often the simplest way to improve is to minimize the time played by your worst players. bourn is easily one of cleveland’s worst players. the less he plays, the better off the tribe is.
Ahhh Bourn another struggling Boras player.
Just SMH!
I don’t know what Boras has to do with it. Free agent contracts usually do not work out in the teams favor.
Nothing to do with Boras; Bourn is exactly the kind of guy that ages poorly – no power, few walks, only skill was speed. He has obviously lost a step or more – he stole 10 bases in 16 attempts last season and has attempted just 4 this season. Boras got a team to pay for Bourn’s rapid decline years; this is why teams have analytics departments now. Cleveland dropped the ball on this one; even a cursory glance at the work of Bill James would have given them pause about a 5-year deal for a speed-only guy entering his 30s. Nobody would give a guy with Bourn’s skillset a long-term contract now, knowing what we know about aging curves by player type.
I’ve read reports saying that high speed guys decline slower then most. Marginal speed guys lose their speed fast but usually the real speedsters keep being productive longer due to defense and baserunning.
Bourn was a speed-only guy, though. Now that he appears to have lost his speed he has no skills to fall back on. Compare that to a guy like, say, Adam Dunn, who lost most of his athleticism and defensive ability fairly early in his career, but remained a productive major-league player for several years because he drew walks and had power. Frank Thomas was similar, too.
Even Rickey, who was still stealing bases at age 40, had other skills once he lost his bat speed – he drew walks, hit for power, got on base, was a very efficient base-stealer. Thinking of other speed-only guys off the top of my head – Vince Coleman, Willy Taveras, Omar Moreno – all were basically done by age-30. Speed ages poorly, probably more poorly than any other skill.
Not only has the back end of the Chi Sox rotation been bad but so has Chris Sale thus far.
Bourne has played in ten seasons. Only once has he had an OPS+ of over 100. He was never going to do it with the bat. Speed, base running, and glove was where the value came from in 2009, 10, and 12. He’s probably not done because he’s not that old, but it doesn’t look at all good. Without that contract, he’d probably be a 4th outfielder