The DFA of Jarrod Saltalamacchia

Last year the Marlins gave Jarrod Saltalammachia, an OK catcher coming off a good season and world series championship, a 3 year 21 million dollar contract to sign on with the fish. He was meant to fill in the gap until JT Realmuto was ready to sign on. Of course he went off and performed at a .220 BA, 320 OBP and the disturbing number of 143 K, or better said, a strikeout in 33 percent of his at bats! Those that do not know enough about baseball need to know that a K is the best case scenario for a defense as nothing positive can happen for the offense thanks a strikeout. Of course Salty was striking out 1 in every 3 at bats!!

Not good Salty...

The Marlins really do have bad luck in signing catchers... Remember how Jeffrey Loria was extremely excited about signing another catcher in 2011 coming off a career year with Toronto? He was more known for his cool masks then his hitting here. Mr John Buck who hit a whopping .192 was that big signee and that big bust, but his catcher helmets are cool!

Bring us back to 2015, and the start of this still very early season. You may recall game number one and Jarrod's bases loaded opportunity with zero outs and his chance to shine.... 

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2015_04_06_atlmlb_miamlb_1&mode=video RUH ROH 

and it really only trended downwards from there. His hitting clip kept going down until the Marlins quickly gave up on him and brought in JT Realmuto quickly into the starting role. The stunning part was that Salty quickly became benched in favor of Realmuto who is a better defender than Salty as evidence by this play on Monday night.

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index.jsp?gid=2015_04_27_nynmlb_miamlb_1&mode=video&content_id=91471483&tcid=vpp_copy_91471483

Catchers do not make that play... so that already is a plus. Also it helps when the catcher or well the position player you have hits better than .069!! So after a small sample size of 33 at bats which in reality is too small to judge in baseball the Marlins decided that after he returned from paternity leave (Nice touch) to designate him for assignment (DFA) That is the fancy way of saying GET OUT! 

One issue here, the Marlins still owe him what is left of this year and next year and even though we talk bad about him, Salty is still a better back up than Jeff Mathis. So why let 14 million just go away and be given the Dan Uggla treatment? There must be something deeper, there must be a reason to not have him around. Was he a clubhouse cancer? Was he really that bad to have around? Who knows, but he is gone now and apparently some American League team will take him and use him as a DH/C. Good luck to you Salty and hopefully the wind generated by your strikeouts can provide some good energy in another stadium. 

On the positive note! A good win and recovery by Steve Cishek to take game two against the Metropolitans. Rubber match against Old man Colon today. Lets keep the winning rolling! 

The Wonderment of Dee Gordon....

So this young man from the Los Angeles Dodgers was traded to Miami in what some would say was a one sided deal... We lost one of our best pitching prospects in Andrew Heaney but also got Dan Haren for a grand total of zero.zero dollars. (He hasn't been too bad either). All we knew about him was that he was fast and he doesn't walk. Well that and that he loves to be caressed by Rod Barajas.

I'm sure he misses his old teammate.

Now he is in Miami and still does not walk but amazingly he has 34 hits in 20 baseball games and is hitting an astonishing .395! Even more astounding is his caught stealing number as he has been thrown out 6 times on the bases already! Even Dee is surprising himself. 

 Now I don't get into those advance BABIP stats which say he is getting lucky and stuff because that just puts a damper even though I am a statistics teacher. Can we just say that he is a quality slap hitter and worth the investment we put on him?

All I know is he has got hops and can easily dunk over Christian Yelich

Take that Christian!!!

So far its been positive having Mr. Dee Gordon around.... now if only he can close games and not let that Shrek guy blow another one... Shades of Heath Bell... 

(That was a scary time period)