Cornelius McInally: Out for 3-4 weeks
Just 2 months into my first season as a General Manager and I was about to place my third player on the Disabled List. I have to admit I much preferred the relaxed, lengthy and amorphous “big-picture” off-season to the daily grind and disaster-management of the regular season. But alas, this is the world we live in, and these are the hands we’re given, ohohoh.
24-year old
Cornelius McInally wasn’t off to a good offensive start at all in his first full season behind the plate at the Major League level and was way below the average starting American League catcher in terms of production. He has been solid behind the plate but since defense was his advertised strength he’s actually been a bit disappointing: 2 errors, 2 past balls, and 4 runners thrown out on 13 attempts against in 371 innings caught weren’t exactly good enough numbers to carry a player with a .224 batting average, .280 on-base percentage, and .301 slugging percentage with just 1 home run and 16 runs batted in 156 at-bats. Nevertheless, we came into the season wanting to evaluate McInally on a full season’s body of work so we made it clear within the organization and to the outside media that there was no doubt McInally would be the starter again when he recovered from his strained achilles tendon.
24-year old switch-hitting backup catcher
Tanyon Meager would take over the bulk of the playing time for us even though he posted a dreadful .199 batting average and .255 slugging in 286 at-bats last season. So far this year he had a .241 average with a .328 on-base and .310 slugging in 58 at-bats. He also had no errors and no past balls and had thrown out 2 of 4 attempted base stealers in 76 innings behind the plate.
We had a couple of options in the minor league system as to a possible replacement as the Major League backup catcher. Both 23-year old
Thomas Goodloe and 24-year old
Steve Lesswick were already on the 40-man roster but Goodloe was hitting just .212 with no home runs in 113 at-bats at AAA Sacramento and Lesswick had just been called up to the River Cats from AA Midland (where he had 6 home runs and a .392 on-base percentage in 176 at-bats).
The best option actually seemed to be 22-year old Canadian
Oscar Aylward who has spent the last three years as a hard-working minor leaguer after being drafted out of high school in 2018. Aylward, from Oromocto, New Brunswick,
Canada’s Model Town, has been hitting .263 with a .326 on-base percentage and .433 slugging in 157 at-bats with the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats. The only thing working against him was that he wasn’t on the 40-man roster and there were only two open spots.
Decisions, decisions.