For the second year in a row, the Indians send a major leaguer to St. Louis for a minor league prospect. Last year we got outfielder James Ramsey in exchange for Justin Masterson, and apparently it’s Brandon Moss for left hander Rob Kaminsky this year.
Moss fits multiple needs for the Cardinals, with first baseman Matt Adams on the DL and outfielder Matt Holliday re-aggravating his quad injury last night.
Kaminsky was the 28th overall pick out of St. Joseph Regional High School in New Jersey by the Cardinals in 2013. That year he was 0-3 in five starts in their rookie league, notching 28 strikeouts and allowing 9 walks in 22 innings. In 2014 he was 8-2 with a 1.88 ERA in A ball, but saw his strikeout rate drop with only 79 whiffs in 100.2 innings pitched. He did put up a solid 1.01 WHIP. So far this season, he’s sat down 79 in 94.2 innings and has a 2.09 ERA at High A Palm Beach.
Baseball America had Kaminsky ranked as the Cardinals #5 prospect after the 2014 season. Fangraphs had him at #4 this spring. Plus, Cardinals fans seem pretty pissed on Twitter about losing him, so he must be okay. He’s just 20 years old and will join Brady Aiken and Justus Sheffield as some seriously exciting southpaws in the Indians minor league system.
Looks like Lonnie will be coming back up to the big club to replace him. Guessing we’ll start seeing Tyler Holt in the lineup almost every day, but Chiz was seeing some time in the OF down in Columbus.
So the Indians basically turned a fringe prospect in Joey Wendle into a Top 100 prospect in Rob Kaminsky. Not bad
No funny headline this week. No one-liners, no exciting clips from the past week and no optimism. Just pure, unadulterated sadness. I wrote last week that three of the next four series were pretty win-able and would determine what we would do at the trading deadline. After dropping one of two in Milwaukee, getting swept at home by the worst team in the division and losing the first two to Kansas City, David Murphy is basking in the LA sun and the Indians are 16 games out of first place. We’re currently riding an 8 game home losing streak. The last time we lost that many games in Cleveland in a row, gas was 57 cents a gallon.
Things are bad, folks. I like to think I’m pretty optimistic most of the time when it comes to this team but there’s no getting around it. We stink. Our All-Star is calling people out, we’ve got our starting pitcher putting the hurt on haters on Twitter,
Really, at this point, there’s nothing left to do but wallow in self-pity and wait till next year. I doubt we see anything major before the deadline, but you never know. And as I write this, Urshela, Lindor and Brantley all leave the yard in a 6 run 6th inning against Jeremy Guthrie and the Royals. I take it back. Now we roll!!!!
Those damn Kansas Citians sure are going for it though. Second best record in baseball, a 9 game lead on the second place team in the division and they just traded for Johnny Cueto and Ben Zobrist. They did give up two of their top three prospects according to Baseball America to get them but you gotta admire the gall of Dayton Moore. I hate them and wish for nothing less than their complete and utter demise, but it’s a fun ass time to be a Royals fan.
Live look in at the Minnesota Twins:
They’ve won just three games since the All-Star Break. In their seven losses, they’ve give up 3, 14, 7, 5, 8, 7 and 8 runs. It’s been reported they’re looking for bullpen help at the deadline, as closer Glen Perkins has given up 6 runs in 4 appearances since returning home from Cincinnati. Byron Buxton could be out an additional month.
Leave it to your Wahoos to catapult a team from last place to third in the span of a week. Tom Brady got his four game suspension upheld for maybe knowing about some deflated footballs but none of the White Sox starting pitchers have been reprimanded for assaulting opposing hitters every night for the past two weeks. They may very well hold on to touted trade target Jeff Samardzija following this recent surge. You know things are going your way when you’re hitting home runs like this:
Every cloud has a silver lining. If the Indians are gonna be 16 games out of first place in the central, I’m glad as hell it’s the Royals and not the Tigers on top. David Price and Yoenis Cespedes are both names that have been uttered in trade whispers. Miggy Cabrera remains out until at least mid-August with a calf injury, and one wonders if they might consider shutting him down for the year if they do end up selling by Friday.
In Other News
Shortstop Eric Stamets will be assigned to AA Akron when he arrives after being sent our way for David Murphy on Tuesday night. A plus defender but not great with the bat. He’s a native of Dublin though, so that’s cool. Here’s his scouting report from MLB.com:
“A very polished infielder, Stamets combines tremendous defensive tools with good instincts and game awareness. He has well above-average speed, which helps to give him good range. Offensively, he isn’t as accomplished and will need to improve at the plate to become an everyday shortstop in the big leagues. He makes a lot of contact, but it’s rarely hard contact and he has minimal power.
Stamets’ glove is good enough to get him to the Major Leagues. His bat will dictate if he can start or if he ends up as a utilityman in the future.”
There were rumors that the Indians asked the Miami Marlins about center fielder Marcell Ozuna. After a 3.7 WAR year in 2013, he struggled so badly to begin this year that he was demoted to AAA. Still only 24 though, he’d command a decent package to entice the Marlins enough to move him. Keep an eye on this…maybe not by the Friday deadline but the teams could rekindle during the Winter Meetings.
Tyler Holt was called up to take Murphy’s spot and started in left on Wednesday. Excited to watch him again. He hustles, is good on the bases and plays solid defense. We should see him out there in the green grass on most nights while he’s up.
You just knew it was coming. Trevor Bauer was spinning his best game of the second half and one of the best of his career (ended up being his first career complete game) and the one run we had accidentally scored was thanks to a Sally Perez throwing error. When that game was tied heading in to the last three innings you had to know we had absolutely no chance of winning.
Cannot wait to hear Bauer's post game after he loses this one 2-1
So that was that. One run on eight hits = our eighth straight loss at home, longest losing streak in Cleveland since The Godfather Part II won Best Picture in 1975. But it turns out the fireworks would come from the Twittersphere, not the post game presser.
Before last night, Bauer had thrown 12.2 innings against the Royals and hit zero batters.
This was in reference to Bauer wearing boxing gloves in the dugout because the Royals had gotten into like sixteen bench clearing brawls leading up to their series in Cleveland at the end of April:
Bauer will earn $1.94 million dollars this year. According to his LinkedIn page, Matt Shelp is a Billing Assistant in the KC area. Indeed.com says the average salary for a Billing Assistant in the US is $31,000.
Before last night, Hosmer had two hits in ten career ABs against Bauer.
@KayNel76 has never thrown a complete game in a Major League Baseball game.
Kendrys Morales was hit with a pitch last night in a 1-1 game with two outs in the 7th inning.
ConJueto&ZenBobrist and Mehke Settle drink spritzers and talk about how they would have went pro if one didn’t hurt his arm and if their coach didn’t have it out for the other.
Agree 100%. Can you imagine having a long day at at the office where you work your ass off and none of your coworkers do anything at all, then come home to someone sitting on your couch mercilessly berating you about how much you suck?
Yes I know he’s a professional athlete but he’s also human. I enjoyed seeing a little fire in Kipnis with his comments earlier this week and I enjoy seeing this from Bauer too. Would you rather the entire team stay silent and pretend this god awful stretch of baseball isn’t affecting them? I certainly wouldn’t.
Thank you to all who tweeted me congrats tonight. Tough loss for the team but we're all doing our best to win for the city and the fans.
— Trevor Bauer (トレバー・バウアー) (@BauerOutage) July 29, 2015
Bottlegate 