Twins May Look To Swing Trade With Braves For Diamond

and we’ve got a deal.

+1

I think Roberts could be had as Twins brass don’t seem to be as high on him as you’d think, but he is still higher-thought-of by prospectors than Diamond, but then again lefty swing pitchers aren’t exactly the thing prospect types really focus on. The team is in love with Rosario, probably because Revere and Benson haven’t shown to be leadoff types, and they ultimately want to see Hicks develop more of a power/speed combo for a more middle of the order bat than leadoff.

Love it

in addition to playing well for us when he was here. He struggled in AAA, but for 23 he looks like something you’d at least want to have in the organization.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=osuna-001edg

Still officially lurking on the 40 man roster.

And we’d pay him with what money? We aren’t the Phillies here.

DOB:

"Even if the Braves had a spot open on the 40-man, Wren specifically said they would not have protected Diamond, and that they actually had a better shot at getting him later than they would’ve if they had protected him. Here’s the reasoning: If the Braves had protected Diamond before the Rule 5, he would almost certainly have been one of the first players dropped from the 40-man at the end of spring training when the Braves needed the roster spot for a player who might help them this season (Diamond, they determined, was/is not ready to help them this season. They don’t need him this season.)

In not protecting him, they lost him to Minnesota in the Rule 5 draft. The Twins now must keep him on their 25-man (major league) roster the entire 2011 season. There’s a good chance they won’t be able to do that, that they will decide they can’t carry him and need to use that roster spot for a player ready to help the Twins win now. In that case, they must offer him back to the Braves for $25,000, half of the claiming price the Twins paid. If that happens, the Braves would do it and take him back, then wouldn’t have to protect him but rather could simply send him to the minor leagues, since he’s got minor league options. They wouldn’t need to add him to their 40-man and could just let him continue developing in the minors for the season, then could protect him next winter if he’s ready."

Well seeing as a pretty decent majority of pitchers in the game today will need it at one point or another in his career, it’s really not going out on a limb to speculate on Vizzy needing TJS. If he does, he’ll recover just as everyone else does. Tim Hudson seemed to do pretty well last year.

You can toss that around about any pitcher in reality. What you do when pitching the ball that hard on a consistent basis is incredibly damaging to the elbow. With his delivery, shoulder surgery would be much more damaging going forward, so let’s hope to steer clear of that, and we’ll all be very happy with Vizzy’s long career in a Braves uniform.

I’ve seen video of his delivery, and he reminds me a lot of Francisco Liriano. Big difference is that he keys off of a curveball rather than a slider. The curve with his motion would be highly impacted by a shoulder issue, but an elbow issue would be relatively easy to recover from with his pitch grouping. Liriano’s injury issues have made him very ineffective as he strengthens the elbow enough to have good movement on his slider again.

Bert Blyleven has said that the slider is the major difference in pitching now vs. the 60s. In the 60s, few guys had sliders. More had curveballs or lived off of variations on their fastball. The slider is a good compliment to a high-velocity fastball, but it really requires torque from an elbow, which wears on an elbow as well. The long-term high-strikeout guys in the past threw tons of innings on a fastball/curveball combination with few injury issues.

His change is a work-in-progress, but it is there, from the scouting I’ve read and what I’ve seen on video, the pitch has potential. It’s not ever going to be a Johan Santana change, but as long as it can just keep hitters from sitting on the hook and the heater, it’s going to be a worthwhile offering.

I saw too. Aroldys made that first batter (Ian Desmond?) look foolish. Did anyone else feel like Armando Benitez was pitching?

Ringo was second base, John was catcher and George was somewhere in the outfield. Paul was starting pitcher. The rest of the players were normal Braves.