Quick report from the afternoon game:
Positives:
- Hassell looks like the deal; smooth in CF and yanked a borderline double off a lefty (Chasen Shreve; how is he still playing baseball?) that he stretched to two easily. Very, very positive over what I've seen from him previously. crap hair though.
- Abrams may be lacking casino access or may have gotten through whatever the issue was; looks ready.
- Wood can hit, a lot. Those doubles were some of the loudest wood from either team.
- Rutledge was giving guys trouble with all his pitches. Cutter was especially good. Good to see him do it for multiple innings.
- Chemistry looks good; yes, it's ST, but guys were loose, joking, having fun even on a road game in a craphole nowhere in the hot sun.
Negatives:
- Wood cannot play outfield. Ball went over his head that I would have caught, and I'm twice his age. He should be getting 1B reps immediately. Otherwise he's a DH. Just not even close to an MLB standard out there.
- Ribalta is scared of MLB hitters. Body language was terrible against Olsen and Ozuna (single and a homer that might have broken up at 75,000 feet somewhere over the Bahamas), then loosened up when he got to the scrubs, tightening again when he got back to the top.
- Lipscomb might want to consider a different line of work that doesn't involve hitting a baseball. Unfortunately, pitchers are allowed to throw these weird spinny pitches that move away from you. Or towards you. Or even just down. But any way you slice it, he's no better at hitting them than ever.
- The Darren Baker story is fun and all, but a lefty hitting 2B-only who can't hit lefties on a team that has a younger starting lefty hitting 2B-only who can't hit lefties much either is not an especially productive use of a 40-man slot.
Also, that stadium is awful. It has the soul of a veterinary office owned by a hedge fund, and the traffic in and out is stupidly incredible considering it's in the middle of nowhere.
