Saturday, July 03, 2004
Broken-bat homerun?!
If you watched Baseball Tonight or Sportscenter this evening then you saw that Detroit's Eric Munson hit a broken-bat homer at Coors Field. Let me say again that I really hope that Vinny Castilla doesn't make the All-Star team. Check out his home/road splits. Through Saturday's games, Castilla has a 1.141 OPS at Coors and a .640 OPS on the road. Seriously, check it out.
But my fear is that those 16 homers and 65 RBI might make Castilla the choice for the Rockies' representative, given that Todd Helton is probably only #4 among NL first baseman. And those three guys he's behind, Albert Pujols, Jim Thome, and Sean Casey, are all deserving, and the guess here is that Thome and Casey are in front of Helton on the reserve 1B list.
That would be a shame, as after Scott Rolen, there are three other 3B I can think of who are much more deserving than Castilla: Mike Lowell, Aramis Ramirez, and Adrian Beltre (one of the few quibbles I have with The Crank's list of All-Star snubs based on his method for choosing rosters). You really can't go wrong with any of those three guys, and of course Rolen would be the NL MVP if the season ended today, and is a good bet to win it when the season is completed as well. Maybe the fact that Casey is hurting means that Helton will slip in front of him, but maybe not. We'll soon find out, I suppose.
posted by Tom Renbarger 9:27 PM
