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Hacksaw’s Thursday Podcast-1:30-pm
You Tube-Lee Hacksaw Hamilton
Hot Topics on the Table-Stay for Fans Forum
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“IN NEED OF PITCHING–JUST ASKING”
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Your name is the San Diego Padres, or the Yankees, the Braves, or Angels, or the Reds, or the Pirates, or nearly half the teams in baseball.
Your pitching staffs have been ravaged by injuries. Your bats cannot carry your teams the rest of the pennant race summer.
I study the stats in baseball constantly. Baseball teams have a 26-man roster, and mandate the most pitchers you can have are 13-per team. And that’s not enough.
So here we are into June, and some of the top teams are staggering because they have so many pitching injuries. The bottom feeders don’t have enough pitching, and there seems to be no way to bridge the gap.
But there is, if a team’s GM is bold enough, the owners strong enough, to give a guy a second chance.
Modern day MLB baseball has allowed guys back into the game after serving suspensions for a wide variety of things. PED violations, gun violations, domestic abuse incidents, DUIs, even gambling.
And so we sit in San Diego, at Yankees Stadium, and a number of other places, short on starting pitchers. Not many solutions, nobody trades you a 20-game winner. Few will deal a frontline pitcher even if he is on the brink of free agency.
AJ Preller, Brian Cashman and others need to be creative before the pennant race gets away from them.
The Padres have Nick Pivetta, a hot-cold Dylan Cease, an ailing Michael King. Who knows if there will ever be another Yu Darvish sighting? Who can really trust the likes of Randy Vasquez or Matt Waldon? Do you really believe career minor leaguers Sean Reynolds or David Morgan or Ryan Berget can hold up in the heat of a pennant race.
At Yankees Stadium, it’s the same. Aaron Judge can hit only so many home runs. 6-of his batting order teammates are hitting below (.240). Ginacarlo Stanton has not returned. There is no Gerritt Cole coming back this year. Luis Gil is still on the DL as are a chunk of the bullpen.
Need I say more about the lowly Angels pitching staff, the faltering Orioles, the trashed Braves pitching staff or a wide variety of others.
Many solutions out there? Not really. Except one big gamble.
If you had the chance to pick up a starting pitcher who was (83-69), at a low level make good contract, wouldn’t you? If you could take a flyer on a pitcher that was (20-4) pitching in Mexico and Japan, why would you not at least make a call?
Yes Trevor Bauer comes off as an intellectual sleaze, disciplined, exiled, suspended, blackballed for sexual misconduct with a groupie baseball fan.
He served his sentence, 190-games in all. He lost some big bucks, (31M) in his Dodgers contract by virtue of his suspension.
His reputation seems shot, but we know this. The ex-Indians-Reds-Dodgers starter can still pitch. His records with the Yokohama Bay Stars and Mexico City Rojos prove that.
He has kept his mouth shut, let his pitching do his talking, and has stayed off the stupidity of social media that got him into hot water to begin with.
You can get him for the major league minimum for the rest of the season. He is in game-shape. Wants a second chance. And would do almost anything to resurrect his career and rebuild his reputation.
Who gives a crap about what a columnist or a talkshow mouth or TV guy would say. If you give him the ball every 5th day and he wins, you win, and that is what the game is all about.
As the old phrase goes, ‘nothing ventured-nothing gained’.
I’d take a chance on Trevor Bauer now, compared to some of the other pitchers some of these teams are dragging out there masquerading as starting pitchers.
It’s real simple. This is the veterans minimum contract. Take the ball and pitch. Keep you mouth shut aside from baseball. Take a summer off from social media. If you screw up, you repay us what we paid you after we gave you a chance.
2nd chance = last chance. You are trying to get to the World Series aren’t you?
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