I would quote someone, but my brain is not fully functioning at this hour. Know what really, truly sucks? Waking up from a deep sleep at 3 am for reasons unknown, sore as hell, tossing and turning for an hour and then realizing that you've got to get up in 3 hours anyway. But at least I'm now...
48 12 minutes from enjoying a delicious greasy breakfast of bacon and eggs.
Fielder was traded back in July of '05 to
Cleveland for 3B
Casey Blake, as the
Crew apparently got tired of having Wes Helms and Keith Ginter suck up out after out at the hot corner and field like a young
Ron Gant to boot.
Blake is still with the team and the man can hit, posting a season line of .305 avg, .353 obp, and .409 slg in 2005, and then in a full year in 'Sconsin last year, he improved his power output enough to make up for a 20 point loss in batting average. His final line came out to a .287 average, .337 on-base, and .425 slugging with 75 runs batted in. He'll make just $730,000 this year, and if the
Crew let him go, I think
Blake would look quite debonair in
Pale Hose.
Fielder, meanwhile, spent a year toiling at Kinston (A-ball) and busted out with 37 home runs, but of course the
Tribe saw fit to keep him down there last year as well. Finally, with a batting average hovering around .250, they dealt him to
Arizona hours before the trade deadline, in exchange for sidearming righty reliever Mike Koplove. It's too bad; a sidearming righty seems very appropriate on a team named after a
Snake, but I digress. Koplove was brilliant down the stretch, winning at least four games that I can recall for the
Tribe, and his composite season line reads an 8-1 record and a 3.07 ERA in 73 innings, as well as a fantastic record when entering with men on base. To top it off, Koplove pitched seven and a third innings in the postseason, allowing just a single run, and he picked up a key win in Game Two of the ALCS, tying up the only series that
Cleveland needed the full slate of games to win. Koplove is in
Seattle now, but flags fly forever.
Little Cecil has 100 home runs in three years of A-ball, and he's slated to play at AA for the first time this year. His other skills are suspect; he looks like a .250 hitter with mediocre strike zone judgement, but, boy, can he hit the ball a mile.
Meanwhile,
Gwynn's been in the
Arizona system for a year and a half, coming over for the immortal
Einar Diaz. An oops on the part of
Milwaukee management, as
Diaz is your typical good-field, no-hit backstop. This will go down as the modern version of the
Julio Machado for
Charlie O'Brien deal of September 1990, but on the bright side for
Milwaukee, Machado, a hot prospect at the time, never quite lived up to the hype -- but apparently because of a lack of opportunity, since his numbers look good. Maybe he got hurt. Maybe he devoted his life to the
Tao (
of Steve?), who knows. Won't shake out that way in this case, though, as
Gwynn is slated to start in center and lead off for the
Snakes. He hasn't posted an
on-base percentage above even .300 since A-ball a year and a half ago, so I doubt very much that it'll work out, but the scout-trout loves him. We'll see.
That was much longer than I planned, but I much liked it. Written all on the fly, too. That means you can shower me with lavish praise now.
P.S. My
musical recommendation for the day, its presence sealing the fact that I am both deliriously tired and losing my mind. Nevertheless, the sun's poking out now, and I can get some chow in 12 minutes, so awake I shall remain. If you have made sense of this post, give yourself a pat on the back. And if it actually made sense...nah, I don't give myself quite that much credit.