Big Bad John!
I will not lie to you, one of the major concerns I had about this team was 2nd base. When we lost Warner Rinncones (he was not a great hitter, but special in the field), I was concerned on what we would do at 2nd base this year. My thoughts were with the rest of this teams hitting ability we did not need a great hitter there, but a solid defensive player.
Well I got my wish and more, not only is JT hitting well at the plate (.281 with a double, a triple and a HR), he is also an incredible defensive 2nd baseman.
I am not sure if he will end the season hitting close to .300 or not, but if we get .250 to .275 out of him this year it is a big time improvement at 2B.
And the great thing is we have Peyton Lejeune and CJ Willis (when healthy), both experienced backups for him. (CJ in college ball and Peyton in the JUCO ranks).
One of the problems we had last year is we had 3 different 2B.
Riccones who could not hit but played good defense
Lado who could hit but was not very good defensively
Willis who was more of a utility player, that was solid hitting and defense, but not great at either last year.
What an upgrade at that position.
Thanks for posting the updates. Haven't had a chance to listen to his comments.
Theut is a major piece to this pitching staff. That is really bad news. I hope a "while" means 2-3 weeks because we'll desperately need him moving into the heart of conference.
We better have em strapped up tight Wed because if we show up like we've been showing up to midweek games, SE will beat our brains in.
I think you are correct on that. It seemed like they were trying to be very careful with him and limiting his duty. Since the BYU series he has really only gone 2/3's of an inning in each outing.
Luckily we did not need him over the weekend and we probably would not have used him in either of these midweek games.
I think we can piece meal what we have against USA, but as the schedule gets deeper in conference play he is a very important piece of our staff.
I believe so. May be good to rip the band-aid off now and put him on the shelf for a period, though it doesn't guarantee he'll be 100% at the end of that spell. The positive is that we're putting some wear/aging some other guys we maybe didnt expect to be as big of contributors. When you get to the last month, I'm hoping this will be a blessing in disguise. I agree that we definitely need him as I went into the season considering him our best bullpen arm
Similar with McGehee. Little soreness is definitely something not to mess around with, though last time he had ramped up fine and was just waiting for doctor clearance. Makes me a little nervous that he's going through the same routine as he went through after his first start.
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