Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Notes, quotes and comment

Kick, Mule! George Suttles'
Hall of Fame plaque.
Each year I sponsor at least one Baseball Reference page. This year I am retaining the Glen Perkins page. I am also picking up the page of Mule Suttles, a Negro League legend and Hall of Famer.

The Negro Leagues are an intriguing chapter of baseball history. Suttles wasn't as renowned as Josh Gibson or Buck Leonard, but he was one heck of a hitter and he deserves to be remembered.

---

Old friend Justin Morneau was placed on the seven-day concussion disabled list during the weekend. As I understand it, he dove for a ball and came up with what was initially diagnosed as a sprained neck.  A day or so later, the concussion list.

It is his life, his career, his paycheck. But once again -- because this same thought occurred frequently in his final, injury-plagued seasons in Minnesota -- I can't help but wonder if it would be best for him to call it a career. He's 34 now. That's fairly old for a baseball player, but pretty young for a human being, It would be nice if he had a fully functional brain for the rest of his life.

--

Chih-Wei Hu, the Twins' Taiwanese right-handed pitcher who impressed me last summer when I saw him pitch in Cedar Rapids, got bumped up from High A Fort Myers to Triple A Rochester for a spot start Tuesday. It apparently went pretty well.




I'll pick a nit here and note that four walks in six innings is not a good rate. (He's walked six all season for the Miracle.) But one run in six innings, as Seth Stohs quickly noted, actually raises Hu's overall ERA for the year. He's been dominating the Florida State League.

Hu's not going to stick with the Red Wings; the Twins are not about to have him skip Double A. He'll return to Fort Myers now. But he's not long for the Florida State League, either. At some point relatively soon, the Twins will have to bump J.O. Berrios from Chattanooga to Rochester, and when that happens Hu is likely to follow in his wake. It's a matter of when -- and who gets bumped at the higher levels to make room for them.

No comments:

Post a Comment