Yes. These aren’t the Hochevar days when there isn’t any competition for positions. Colon is sandwiched between Giavotella and Navarro with Bianchi in the mix if he could stay healthy. Gio is forcing GMDM’s hand and will get a 40-man spot and be up this year with the chance to take 2nd from Getz, whether in two weeks or in September and I presume him to be the immediate future with Colon needing to take the job rather than being given it. Colon lacks speed and hasn’t been hitting much and has Navarro hitting better and at 2nd in Springdale. When Colon was drafted, Gio wasn’t a top prospect, but he heated up in Arkansas and has turned into a monster at Omaha, so the need at the time of last year’s draft is no longer there, especially with Rey Navarro performing better than Colon in his brief time with the Naturals after doing well in the bad hitter’s park that is Wilmington.

“As for Cain, i don’t think the batting average comparison you are making to Hosmer and Moustakas are apples to apples. When Cain comes up, he will be embarking on his SECOND 160 at bats,”

For apples-to-apples we might consider Kila late last year or Brayan Pena hitting .300 at the same time. I’m not guaranteeing a drop-off, just suggesting a degree of difference between Omaha and the K. Aviles’ numbers in Omaha reflect the inverse of the drop from the minors, a .225 hitter in the bigs becomes a .300 hitter in the minors. Kila is also hitting around .300 at Omaha and Jeff Suppan is winning lots of games up there.

Cain’s numbers, while good, don’t really stand out as dominant in his line-up and he is still striking out about 25% of the time, a percentage unlikely to drop when facing much better pitching. I expect Cain to come up as his defense, arm, and speed will play well in the majors, but I don’t expect him to replace Melky’s production soon or even next year when we could still have Melky and when we should have a seriously competitive team. Cain might become Mickey Mantle or he might become Jarrod Dyson. We’ll learn the answer, but I wouldn’t just give the Melkman away to clear a space for Cain.

Gio was 1-3 with 2 walks batting leadoff last night. He is hitting .340. I could run off more stats but we all know that AAA stats are inflated right now. Let’s see what he can do in KC.

Getz has had over 900 major-league ABs. If we would carry fewer pitchers, we could have Gio and Getz on same roster. Carrying 5 guys to play 3B/SS/2B is pretty common. This is not rocket science.

Come on Craig,you know it makes sense!

“Im still learning,being new to the nerd game & trying to integrate it with the eyeballs”

Making a good fist of it too old chap,very brave of you to take on the new generation at there own game but i hope you dont lose your “old self” too much!

I’ll stick mostly to the eyeball approach British style for now as i’m too long in the tooth to change,though when your investing in the amount of money i do on sports you have to note some stats,but without those “eyeballs” you’d end up very sore on the wallet!

Clark, xFIP seems heavily weighted to K/9, which would definitely drop Francis, even though his K/BB is not bad, LD% is in range of the top several pitchers, and he has a hr/fb about half of Greinke’s. fangraphs did change Greinke’s xFIP to 3.14, but still hadn’t included him with pitching leaders.