Minor League Free Agent:Miguel Batista
Posted on January 20th, 2011 by Jeff in Minor Leagues, tags: Miguel Batista
(Ed Note: You may have gotten a sneak preview of this yesterday, but it was supposed to run on Thursday all along. Doh!)
Another minor league free agent with a non-roster invite to Spring Training in the form of Miguel Batista. Batista fits the Dave Duncan profile:
Old: Check!
Ground ball tendencies: Check!
Abnormally low ERA last year: Check!
Batista is taking the “old” thing to a whole new extent as this next season will be his age 40 season. There are too many seasons to digest on the whole career for Batista, but looking at the last few we can get a good enough idea of where he is coming from.
Batista is the opposite of Snell in that he has added 2 MPH on his fastball since 2004. He has also developed a cutter and turned himself into a two-pitch pitcher. Over 95% of the time, he throws either a fastball at 92 MPH or a cutter at 86 MPH.
Bill James thinks he will have a very similar season to last year with the Nationals, but without the abnormally low BABIP (.258 in 2009) that kept his ERA low. So, beware the false ERA straw man. Batista is one of the least exciting pitchers I can think of looking at the stats. He doesn’t strike out a low of guys, he doesn’t have a lot of different pitches, he had an abnormally low ERA and did I mention he is 40?
I cannot see Batista accepting a demotion to Memphis, even though he accepted a minor league free agent deal, but odds are we will not see the 40 year old in the DFRs this Spring. If someone is going to get a chance in the back of the bullpen, I’d much rather see Salas, Sanchez or even Augenstein than Batista.
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Unlike Snell, I don’t think Batista has a hope of being a depth starter; he’s remade himself as a reliever. With Boggs, Motte, McClellan, Miller, and Franklin entrenched in the Cardinals bullpen, that leaves 2 spots (3 if they carry 13 pitchers again). One spot probably will go to Tallet as a LOOGY, the other to Salas since he seemed to gain the coaching staff’s trust last season. Batista could assume the Thompson role of garbage relief/emergency starter if they carry 13. Of course, that would eat up the last spot on the 40-man, and I’m not sure they’d do it for that kind of role.
Speaking of non-roster invitee pitchers, I’m wondering where Brandon Dickson fits into all of this. He obviously isn’t thought of as having real major league potential (considering he hasn’t shown up on most team prospect lists after a very good year), but he also seems to be the kind of pitcher Duncan would take a liking to.
Wow, Kenny G looks like crap. Is he on meth now or something? He looks like a corpse with a wig.
On a lesser note, my money’s on Batista to make the big club out of Spring Training.
“he doesn’t have a lot of pitches”; isn’t this the same Miguel Batista that use to have an arsonal of about 10. Multiple fastballs and change ups of various speeds, plus he uses different arm angles too. Sort of a Jack-of-all-pitches and master of none. He’s someone that DD can work with in figuring out his best pitches. It sounds like Miguel has simplified things in his old age. We needed depth and that’s probably the best description of him the whole way round. Albeit we need extra starters not relievers, since 4 of our 5 current rotation have had health issues.
Grant, perhaps it’s time to change his name to Kenny Geez!