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.

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