If you're not in the mood for baseball yet -- and if you aren't, then why are you here? -- Scott Reifert posted some video of Carlos Quentin in the cage, and a couple other videos around Camelback Ranch as well.
It's HD quality, so be prepared to wait for it to load.But with more than a month before the regular season starts, all we have is time.
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Keep those sights and sounds in mind. Play them in the background on loop. Breathe slowly. Breathe deeply.
Because we're going to talk about the rotating DH.
To make the merry-go-round go faster
So that everyone needs to hang on tighter
just to keep from being thrown to the wolves.
The more I read about the Tilt-a-Whirl, the more I have a bad feeling about it. And Joe Cowley's newest attempt to create spring training drama isn't helping.
Cowley is readying the trap door for Mark Kotsay:
What transpired the last four-plus months will at least go a long way in defining the 2010 season -- good or bad.
And the one guy in the center of that storm -- the well-traveled, well-bearded Kotsay.
Chalk it up to sensationalism, but Mark Gonzalez gave Andruw Jones' workload a greater share of newshole, and it might be scarier.
Jones said he was part of a three-player DH rotation with Blalock and David Murphy with the Rangers.
"I will do whatever is asked," said Jones, who has batted .213 with 13 homers in 244 career at-bats as a DH. "My goal is to play every day. But whatever, happens."
I'm reminded of the football saying that Bears fans are familiar with: If you have two quarterbacks, you don't have one. Granted, platooning hasn't found its way to the QB position, but we can say that if you have three DHs, ain't nobody's hitting.
Upon first glance, Texas DHs weren't awful, finishing sixth in the league with an .802 OPS, first in homers (38) and third in slugging percentage (.491).
Unfortunately, they were second-to-last in OBP (.312) and batting average (.242) to the Kansas City Royals.
Now, remove Hank Blalock and his 15 homers as a DH from the equation and replace him with Kotsay, who has hit just 17 homers over the last four years. Add in the fact that Jones is coming to the White Sox on the heels of four terrible months (think Jermaine Dye, but worse, and with no recent track record).
What do you get? Well, not many reasons for optimism.
It reminds me of Jimmy Gobble's brief White Sox career. Before joining the Sox, he showed an ability to retire left-handed hitters with the Royals, but Trey Hillman used him against righties way too much. For some reason, the White Sox did the same thing. Gobble faced more righties than lefties, and was out of a job after a couple months.
Less obscurely, Darin Erstad. He had suffered injuries the last two times the Angels played him regularly in center field. With his defense, baserunning and contact-oriented approach, he would have been a perfectly acceptable bench player.
And we know which road the Sox traveled.
The Sox haven't learned from other team's mistakes before, and the rotating DH idea combines two of them -- an overreliance on a tanking talent (Dodgers, Rangers) and a guy with a bad back (Athletics, Red Sox). Two negatives usually only make a positive in math.
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Out of context quote time! Guillen on Jones:
He's a little hungry.
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Christian Marrero Reading Room:
*Gavin Floyd isn't worried about his hip.
*Bobby Jenks has given up alcohol. I wonder if that helped he and the Sox agree about the conditioning criticism.
*Scott Linebrink says three different things explain his last three second-half fades.
*A little more about Sergio Santos' shortstop-to-bullpen transition.
*Daniel Cabrera gets a few paragraphs, continuing the John Van Benschoten legacy.
*And Ozzie Guillen is on Twitter. It's either going to be banal or awesome. And if it's awesome, it's probably going to be short-lived.
