Very impressed by Montanez

[Sports Guy]

In the end, it really depends on how good the young pitcher is. Which I know you know, so no offense intended.

But if we're going to choose a riskier choice in LF (and Reimold and Lou are both riskier than Scott) we better be getting a pitcher who is both good and low-risk. Giving up a known quantity to chase risk at two positions (LF and P) isn't wise. It's great to deal in quantities of arms, but you don't trade established MLB production for just another probability/possibility in a stable full of possibilities.

No doubt LJ.

Scott isn't likely going to fetch the type of player we would need to justify trading him.

I think his value lies with what he gives us, not what he brings back in a trade.

[Tony-OH]

This is also what I like about Montanez in the little I've seen him. I think his skills will play in the majors.

I'm kind of halfway between you and Jon. I believe there are guys who have good minor league numbers but who won't succeed in the majors for the reasons you say, but I also think there are guys who never get a real chance because of certain biases scouts tend to have. Just read the first chapter of Moneyball.

In any event, Montanez is getting his chance, and I'm glad of it.

I'm cetainly not suggesting that some scouts don't have biases, because they do. I asked one scout from an AL team what he thought of Montanez (this was in early July) and he said he though he was nothing more than an organizational guy. I asked him why he thought that and he replied, "He's like 27 or something right? He's an organizational guy."

So basically without giving thought that Montanez, who is actually 26, could have been peaking, he just threw him away as an org guy.

So these guys do exists, and I agree that guys should be given chances, but a good scout will try and see players vs pitching prospects in order to get a better read.

Now don't get me wrong, I agree with Jon when it comes to giving some of these guys chances instead of paying $4 million for a guy who may barely do better than the replacement player, but where I differ is that Jon seems to believe the numbers MUST be believed and that personnel guys are just some idiots who just rely on the way things have always been done. Is there some of that at times, absolutely, but when the Jon Knotts of the world are getting into their 30s and still have not been given a full 500 at bats in a season it's because a whole lot of baseball people have determined he's missing something.

[Tony-OH]

I think you're overstating the case by a lot. It's easy to fall back on tired old scouting cliches, but much harder to find players who hit the cover off the ball in AAA who consistently failed in the majors. (Yea, I'm sure you can go find some guys who had .950 OPSes in a bandbox in the PCL then hit .230 in the majors - you know that's not what I'm talking about.)

Hitters are hitters. And there are plenty of non-star pitchers in the majors. The difference between AAA and the majors isn't much different than AA to AAA. Or A to AA. Yes, there are players who are productive in AAA, but aren't in the majors. But there aren't many players who're very good in AAA but can't hit a lick in the majors.

First off, I completely disagree with that first statement. Actually, I'm not certain if I could disagree more.

Secondly, no one is saying they won't hit a lick. Hell, I could take a good hitter from Single-A and put him in the majors and he'll hit a little. The key is whether the guy can be a productive major league hitter in the role available to him in the big leagues.

Most of the guys that you see that are professional Triple-A guys are usually not good defensively. This limits them to DH realistically, maybe LF or 1B. Most teams already have pretty good options at 1B and LF but even if they don't there are usually guys available each year that can play those positions well and have a track record of hitting in the majors.

Now an argument can be made that these 4-A guys would work cheap and perform as well or almost as well as these other options, but they may also struggle with the top end pitchers, something that probably has already been noted by scouts. Now I realize you have a distain for professional baseball scouts and personnel people, but in my opinion a lot of them have a lot of experience at seeing what works and what doesn't work in the major leagues.

There's probably a pretty good reason why the guy is where he is and it's doubtful it's just because they are too stupid to give him a chance.

[El Gordo]

I'm not ready to write Montanez off as simply a 4th OF just yet, if he can keep up the hitting he'll have a good shot at winning the starting LF job.

Up until this season Montanez averaged .742 OPS in the MiL. You are ready to replace a guy with a MiL OPS of .900 and a ML OPS of .872 and is a +6 ML defender in LF, with him, based on one good AA season and 50 ML AB's?