Day 39 – Let ‘em Play

Very surprised to see McDonald is not yet on the DL. They called up Jorge Velandia from AAA while sending down Lind, which means for the time being they are playing 2 men short while Eckstein and McDonald still occupy roster sports. In other words the only bench players are Velandia and a backup catcher. Either one or both has to be back in a day or two or they will have to DL them.

Now Lind getting sent down is no surprise, given they had already said Stewart would be playing full time in LF. There is no point having him sit on the bench, Lind should be getting regular AB’s. The question is if 19 AB’s was enough of a sample to say Lind still isn’t ready. Lind was web gemmed twice and I’m sure there were a couple other balls hit hard but just within range of the defenders.

The Lind situation is starting to look like the way they handled McGowan. After McGowan initially came up to the majors and struggled they ended up bouncing him around from starter to reliever and from AAA to the majors for a couple yrs never really giving him another sustained chance in the bigs. It is hard to say how much this affected his development if at all, maybe it even helped, but after pitching lights out to start the 2007 year in AAA, McGowan got the call up and was left alone to start every 5th day and the results followed. Maybe they need to do the same thing w/Lind, just let him play. Yes he had the chance last year but I think it was a little early when he did come up as I would have liked to have seen him succeed in AAA for longer and he knew it was only a matter of time once Johnson came back that he would be going back down. At some point w/these kids you have to run them out there and see if they land on their feet.