Deadline Deals, Perspective 2

I like these 2 trades for a number of personal reasons.

First of all, I agreed with many sport broadcasters out there that were concerned that Bautista was under 200 pounds and threw close to 98 MPH, with poor mechanics. As most of my fellow bloggers know, I'm a fan of purging Baird's lousy players (most likely lousy b/c they were rushed, but lousy as they stand now, nonetheless), i.e., Bautista, Affeldt (can't start and if you have to hold your breath when he comes in relief, then you know he's a weakness), Greinke, Howell, though Nunez and maybe Burgos will eventually come around.

I'm happy that we may have a legit 1st baseman. Do we have an infield coach? Maybe we can pull an Oakland A's, ala Scott Hattesberg, and make a serviceable fielder out of him. Under Baird, this concept would have made me laugh, but Dayton (so far) seems like the real deal. Rotoworld.com, a fantastic website, thinks that Shealy can hit .280/20HR/85RBIs in the bigs, which looks to be our best starting player (projected stat-wise) other than Teahen, as of right now.

Here's what I like about Dohmann, he has a career 2:1 SO:BB ratio, 106:53. His BA against has been steadly increasing since he made it to the bigs (.236 up to .277) and his career ERA is 5.22. He's also 28. Let's break it down, not knowing his pitches: He has experience, he's cheap, and he strikes guys out. The poor qualities (ERA and BA Against) are a concern. His ERA may not be, he did play in Coors and some guys just aren't meant to pitch there. He could rediscover himself in a normal climate. His BA against is a real concern though. Hopefully, he lacked confidence in his ability b/c he pitched poorly in CO, which is fixable with a few successful outings. We have to wait and see on that. Another concern, though, is his lack of DP. He has led batters to ground out 5 times in his 3 big league years. But, like de la Rosa, maybe he is a reclamation project and we see what 1 sample size does (de la Rosa - 3.00 ERA on Saturday).

Get rid of Stairs. I'm happy about this. I'm also happy we got an older guy with pretty good numbers. His age, experience, and above average numbers cry out for a callup, i.e., the bullpen till he proves he can handle, ala Braves style of integrating pitchers (no wins, 3.28 ERA at AAA Oklahoma). I think we'll see him pretty soon and probably end up replacing lazy Hernandez.