PITCHERS (11): Chad Bradford, Pedro Feliciano, Tom Glavine, Aaron Heilman, Roberto Hernandez, John Maine, Guillermo Mota, Darren Oliver, Oliver Perez, Steve Trachsel, Billy Wagner.
CATCHERS (2): Paul Lo Duca, Ramon Castro.
INFIELDERS (7): Carlos Delgado, Julio Franco, Anderson Hernandez, Jose Reyes, Jose Valentin, Chris Woodward, David Wright.
OUTFIELDERS (5): Carlos Beltran, Endy Chavez, Cliff Floyd, Shawn Green, Michael Tucker.
So we dropped Ring, and went back to 11 pitchers. I wish we would have put Williams and not Perez on the roster as the 4th starter. Anderson Hernandez was added in Ring's place, freeing Woody from the IF and allowing him to be a right-handed hitting outfielder.
Floyd being on the roster tells me that Willie & Omar view Milledge as a net negative right now. They must be so worried about Lasting's presence being a distraction that they're willing to put Cliff on the roster, who will be lucky to get 3 AB's in this series. And hopefully we won't see him in the OF at all. For his sake as well as ours. It was just this type of situation, streching a badly injured guy who wanted to fight through it, that turned Buckner into Buckner.
2 comments:
It's hard to overlook Floyd's solid #s in NLDS and his threat in line-up, but if they had even the slightest positive feeling about Milledge now he should clearly be on the roster instead of Floyd. Certainly this doesn't help the Mets argue his value if they try to trade him early next year.
Hopefully they do not play Floyd tonight or tomorrow night. Give him 3 more days to rest, use him Saturday if you need to. Reserve him as a pinch hitter tonight if necessary. Bottom line: if we can't beat the Cards tonight with Glavine vs. Weaver without Cliff Floyd in lineup, we're not going anywhere anyway. So I say make the likely bet that you should and will win tonight's matchup without him (and probably tomorrow too), and give him the rest. Injuring Floyd further doesn't help assuming we get to WS - we are going to need him as healthy as possible to take on Tigers.
In the WS, where you can DH him, it makes a lot of sense to have Floyd on the roster. In this series, not so much. Chavez is twice the fielder that Floyd is even when Cliff is healthy, and with everything Chavez has brought as a hitter--high BA, situational hitting, bunting, SB's--it's hard to argue there's much of a drop off when he's in the lineup.
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