June 3, 2010
Cuddyer away, Casilla out, and Valencia up
Since these West Coast games really screw up my blogging routine, I'll keep it brief ...
• Michael Cuddyer has been put on bereavement leave after the death of his father-in-law. He's expected to miss four days.
• Alexi Casilla is scheduled to undergo arthroscopic elbow surgery that will sideline him for at least a month and perhaps the rest of the first half, with Matt Tolbert returning from Triple-A to replace him on the bench.
• Danny Valencia has been called up from Triple-A, which definitely comes as a surprise to me. He recovered from a slow start to raise his batting average to .298, but it's an empty .298 with zero homers and a 34-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 47 games. He's at .298/.350/.391 overall this season and .291/.324/.424 in 118 career games at Triple-A, which isn't very impressive for a 25-year-old with a so-so glove. I'd love to see Valencia step up and emerge as the long-term answer at third base, but I'm skeptical. It'll be interesting to see how long he sticks around.
• Oh, and the call against the Twins amazingly wasn't even the worst game-ending blown call of the night. Not by a long shot.