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Personally, I'd rather have Matthew Valbuena...oops. wrong sport

http://www.baseball-reference.com/playe ... lu01.shtml

I suspect he's minor league or fringe major league fodder. If he starts for the Jays next April, It will be a sign of the apocalypse.

Highly unlikely but...

Kelly Johnson leaves via FA, Jays get draft pick(s)

Valbuena and Hechavarria split time in the MLB at 2B? Maybe?

Highly unlikely.

If he's the starting 2B, it would be absolutely PATHETIC!! They better re-sign Johnson!

There is no chance that Valbuena will be starting, nor that the team expects him to. He's a utility infielder, in that he's someone who can play several positions at a well below average level defensively, and he can't hit. He's depth and depth only.

Haha, called it last week. The kind of guy AA likes to take a chance on, and just means that Hech is going to get a long look this year.

Are we just going to pretend like this guy doesn't have even a little bit of talent?

His AAA OBP is like .370+ over the last 4 years and he hit 17 homers last year. Only 26.

Honestly all I know about this guy is what i've read about him in the last 15 minutes after I found we got him. Seems to me like he could be a decent utility guy for the end of the bench and at the very worst he'll be added depth at 2B in the minors.

MikeM wrote:Are we just going to pretend like this guy doesn't have even a little bit of talent?

His AAA OBP is like .370+ over the last 4 years and he hit 17 homers last year. Only 26.

He has talent. What he has lacked is the ability to hit big league off-speed pitches, and he got progressively worse against fastballs (presumably, as he started looking off-speed and pitchers learned not to challenge him) in 2010 and his short stint in 2011.

It's possible that Dwayne Murphy could be of great benefit to him; that's the style of player he does well with. But I'm not too hopeful...youngish though he might be, he has still hit .195/.267/.261 over the past two seasons and 354 PAs in the bigs, looking pretty lost all the while.

Utility man. Left handed batter. Low risk.

Hope we caught lightning in a bottle.

Anytime I think Valbuena, I think this

http://www.viddler.com/explore/STO/videos/17/

There There wrote:Anytime I think Valbuena, I think this

http://www.viddler.com/explore/STO/videos/17/

That was highly entertaining.

Wo1verine wrote:If he's the starting 2B, it would be absolutely PATHETIC!! They better re-sign Johnson!

Yeah, who wants draft picks?

There There wrote:Anytime I think Valbuena, I think this

http://www.viddler.com/explore/STO/videos/17/

LOL, I came in here to post that. You beat me to it.

There There wrote:Anytime I think Valbuena, I think this

http://www.viddler.com/explore/STO/videos/17/

That was good... it left me wanting more, lol!

This deal also gives AA better bargaining ability. When negotiating with teams or FA 2Bs, he doesn't have to be desperate not having a 2B at all, he can at least pretend he sees 'the wow factor' in Valbuena and can doesn't have to accept outrageous prices for second baseman's.

This is the typical AA deal. Very low risk high reward. Valbuena has been one of those guys who cant make the leap to the mlb thus far in his career. But you never know when one of those guys just needs a change of scenery. I really dont see a down side to this deal. I expect him to start in AAA maybe end up as a bench guy this year if he shows well. I think if we dont make a splash to fill the gap hech playing SS and escobar playing 2b would be solid. Sure escobar is an awesome ss. But hech is a defensive specialist with some up side and he'd be much better at ss.

Schadenfreude wrote:There is no chance that Valbuena will be starting, nor that the team expects him to. He's a utility infielder, in that he's someone who can play several positions at a well below average level defensively, and he can't hit. He's depth and depth only.

To be fair, the UZR #'s he posted at some of these positions are a tiny sample size that make UZR worthless when evaluating the other positions.

But I guess something could be said for the whole "where there's smoke there's fire" thing.

It is hard to see him as anything more then depth though. Looking over his stats it's hard to see him doing much better then his "career year" posting a .714ops over 368PA's. And even that year he posted a 0.1WAR. So even if he beats his best year at the plate by a bit, how valuable would he really be?

Hendrix wrote:

Schadenfreude wrote:There is no chance that Valbuena will be starting, nor that the team expects him to. He's a utility infielder, in that he's someone who can play several positions at a well below average level defensively, and he can't hit. He's depth and depth only.

To be fair, the UZR #'s he posted at some of these positions are a tiny sample size that make UZR worthless when evaluating the other positions.

But I guess something could be said for the whole "where there's smoke there's fire" thing.

It is hard to see him as anything more then depth though. Looking over his stats it's hard to see him doing much better then his "career year" posting a .714ops over 368PA's. And even that year he posted a 0.1WAR. So even if he beats his best year at the plate by a bit, how valuable would he really be?

It's kind of sad but even that .714 OPS is a significant improvement over what we have managed at 2B the last two years.

I think he can be our cheap stopgap at 2B.

We aren't competing this year anyways so mind as well give a young player a shot.

There There wrote:Anytime I think Valbuena, I think this

http://www.viddler.com/explore/STO/videos/17/

LOOOOL! I cried watching this vid! Good sh*t!