The
Tigers recently made two moves. They
placed Alex Avila on the DL and designated Omir Santos for assignment. They promoted catcher Byan Holaday and relief
pitcher Jose Ortega to take their spots on the roster. The following
players have been, at one time or another, on the 25-man roster that started
the year in AAA: Holaday, Ortega, Drew Smyly, Casey Crosby, Luke Putkonen, Brayan
Villarreal, Adam Wilk, Thad Weber, Quintin Berry, Matt Young, Omir Santos, Brad
Eldred, Clete Thomas. That’s 13 players
and we’re barely in June. If my
calculations are correct, the Tigers had 16 players on their roster last year
who started in the minors, and that includes September call-ups.
Bryan
Holaday is a right-handed batter that had a stat line of .248/.313/.314, 0 HR, 10
RBI, 11 BB, 23 K in 137 PA in AAA. He
has a career stat line of .238/.314/.343, 10 HR, 64 RBI, 59 BB, 142 K in 696 PA
spanning 3 years in the minors. He was
drafted out of college and immediately got placed in High-A ball and then moved
to AA in 2011 and AAA in 2012. His
strong defensive skills (38.5% caught stealing rate this year) probably helped
him speed through the minors and eventually to the majors. His numbers don’t suggest that he’ll be any more
than a back-up at the ML level, and unless he’s very, very good at defense he
probably won’t last long. I’ve read that
he does have strong leadership qualities, so that should help too.
Holaday
was batting .333/.385/.417 against left-handed pitching, but that’s only in 28
PA. In 2011 he was hitting
.169/.247/.277 against left-handed pitching, so his improvement is most likely due to small sampling. He did improve on his LD rate, 17.6% from 14.4% in 2011, so that’s a
positive. Yeah, there’s really not much
to look at there, except to hope that he’s really good on defense.
Bryan
Holaday is starting today and batting 9th, so we should know soon
enough how good he is at defense.
Jose Ortega was once ranked #10 Tigers prospect by Baseball-America in 2011. He’s a right-handed pitcher, who had 29 IP,
4.03 ERA, 1.897 WHIP, 9.0 BB/9, 11.5 K/9, 3.89 FIP, 4.55 SIERA. Yikes, look at that walk rate! He throws a mid-90s fastball that he apparently
needs help commanding. It gives him a
good strikeout rate, but a terrible walk rate.
Left-handers
are hitting .216/.463/.270 against him and right-handers are hitting .257/.369/.371
against him. He looks like he’ll be a
pretty solid pitcher that can get both lefties and righties out, if he can just get
better command and control on his pitches.
I’m
predicting that it’ll be a short stay for Ortega as he just doesn’t look ready
for prime time.
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