Baseball Prospectus considers Hunter Pence to be one of the worst best players in the league. I think they actually have him as the worst of the best.
ESPN just labelled him as the worst of the Team MVP's. Sounds about right, which tells you where this team is at, but the future looks bright.
Reds are still the team to beat (wow how often can you say that?). They won the division by five games over the cards. The Brewers and Cubs both made great improvements to their clubs (Greinke to the Brewcrew/Garza&Pena to the Cubbies) but both teams finished 14+ games behind the Reds last season. I think the Astros will be battling for 3rd/4th based on their talent level.
Pence? Myers? Bourn? Ardolis Chapman made it. Jacoby Ellsbury made it. Elvis Andrus made it. One guy that has barely tasted the majors, one that was injured all of last year, and like Pence tailed off after a magnificent start to his career, and one young guy who hasn't hit at the ML level. There are definitely Astros that belong over some of those.
Devastating news... http://houston.astros.mlb.com/news/...content_id=16801138&vkey=affililiate&c_id=hou
For the kid and his development, it is. Spring Training, and this season as a whole, is very important so missing a few months can really hurt his progress. Hopefully it is just a few months and he can be back in June but even then it will take a while for him to get going again. For a team rebuild, losing a key figure like Castro is bad news...very bad news.
So they can scope his knee and he should be out anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks for you and I, probably a little less for a professional athlete. Hopefully he's back late-May, early June. Towles as a big-league backup just scares me to death. Is Esposito ready? Can Koby go back to catching for a short spell?
Does anybody remember those games late in Mike Piazza's career where everyone would run on him? They wouldn't even bother to take a lead. They'd just go standing up and the throw wouldn't even be close. Koby Clemens at catcher would be worse.
yeah but it's really not devastating... devastating news = tommy john surgery or microfracture and players being out for at least a season or most of it.
