“Hey, I hear Nageotte is getting his confidence back.”

“Oh really, hadn’t paid much attention to anyone other than Bloomquist.”

“Well, it’s true. Maybe we should bring him up and throw him into a tough situation,” said Bill.

“Wouldn’t want him to get a fat head.”

“That right, we are doing the kid a favor, really.”

“Okay,” said Bavasi, “I’ll make the call.”

“And I’ll put him in a difficult spot,” said Mike.

Bavasi turned to the attendent as requested a double-tall latte, then settled into the chaise lounge in the washroom. He hesitated for a moment, then said.

“You know what would be really great, let’s send him right back down regardless of what happens.”

“That would be great,” said Mike.

“I bet he could even take the train up in the morning, and the train down that afternoon. That would be cool.”

“Naw, let’s make sure he drives up in traffic, then drives home in traffic too. That way he’ll get a long time by himself in the car to think about things. Setting a young player up to fail, then letting him stew about it, is a good management technique,” said Mike.

“Done deal,” said Bill, and he walked off into the night.

Justin Leone is in Portland, hitting .460/.541/.889 (!) while waiting for the Padres to call.

While there’s no way to know how well Livingston will or won’t do as a major league starter, I do think he’ll be an interesting test of the extent to which pure scouting should be allowed to hold sway at the higher levels.

Despite the fact that Livingston has done nothing but succeed at every level, there are a lot of baseball people who would prevent him from rising any higher simply because they don’t think his stuff will translate at the major league level … due in large part to ingrained prejudices against soft-tossers.

I say, let’s keep this simple. If you do nothing but succeed, you should keep getting chances to succeed until you fail.

Livingston is scheduled to start for Tacoma tonight and I’ll be attending. Their site still has him listed as the starter. And, I can’t find any other details out there.

Interestingly, Dave only an hour or so earlier had pooh-poohed a caller who thought Rohn would be in line to take over– he said no, as Hargrove wasn’t going anywhere, and Rohn had only won at the AAA level, and wasn’t even at Tacoma anymore, and he then had to ask where Rohn was currently (his crew informed him Rohn was an advance scout…)