More freely-available talent theater
“And now I must leave — for no raisin!” — Giant Brain
Ryan Church got tossed off the Nationals. Church is a 27-year old, left-handed-hitting outfielder who can play center field fine and is good defensively in the corners.
A while ago, I was bitching about the M’s roster makeup and how their bench choices as discussed then didn’t really help them solve their problems. Look! Right here! You can have him be Ibanez’s defensive caddy and general all-around 4th OFer! He hits for some power! He’s fricking free!
Ryan Church’s weighted mean PECOTA forecast: .272/.337/.468 (!)
Carl Everett, just to bring this up again, weighted mean .268/.334/.449
(Hee Choi: .270/.371/.511)
Church had a really nice year last season, too, which makes the decision to toss him even more baffling. There are a lot of teams that could use him. The M’s should be first in line.
Or the Royals just tossed Chip Ambres in the scrap pile. Ambres is 26, right handed (for that L/R balance) and plays the outfield too. I don’t think he’s quite the fielder that Church is, and his weighted mean forecast is .251/.341/.438 — hey, that’s still Everett-esque — but here’s another guy available for nothing. And Ambres has some really strange comperable players on his PECOTA card: maybe he stinks, and maybe he turns into something useful.
Borchard was a nice pickup, but Church would be a far better fit as a backup outfielder. And this whole sampler table of talent only serves to further illustrate that Carl Everett was a massive overpayment.
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Well, my understanding of the situation is that I’m not Jim Bowden (very thankfully), so I don’t know what he’s going to do with Ryan Church. For the sake of the Nationals, I hope he’s back in their lineup soon… but if they’re bent on getting rid of him, it probably wouldn’t take Nageotte or Foppert. I think they would do a Mateo trade for Church if offered since injuries have decimated their pitching staff, which wasn’t so deep to begin with.
It would also fill a need on the M’s since Church is a much better short-term and long-term option than Will Bloomquist or Joe Borchard. I like Jeremy Reed more than Church, but with Adam Jones on the horizon, I would look into trading Reed for a pitcher, which is way down the road in this line of thinking