Friday, March 14, 2008

Sox choose Cash to replace Mirabelli

The Red Sox have announced that Kevin Cash will be Doug Mirabelli’s replacement.

According to team sources, the 37-year-old Mirabelli’s bat had slowed since last season, when he appeared in 48 games and hit just .202 with 5 home runs and 16 RBIs. His defense, particularly his throwing arm, has declined. In the end, the Red Sox decided Kevin Cash, as solid as there is defensively, was the better option.

I have a really hard time seeing Cash as a season-long solution.

I recognize that Cash is a good defensive catcher, but in his best offensive season (2004) he hit .193 with a .249 OBP.

If Tek goes down for any length of time, this is going to get painful.

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Thursday, March 13, 2008

Sox release Mirabelli

Doug Mirabelli

I’m caught a bit off guard by this one, but the Red Sox have released Doug Mirabelli.

I stuck up for Mirabelli the last couple years. Not because he was good, but because he made it seem like anybody could play professional baseball. He can’t run, he can’t hit—in fact, he doesn’t really have any discernable skills aside from being able to catch an obscure pitch.

There was always the idea that you could go out in your back yard, pay some college kid $5 bucks an hour to throw you knuckleballs, and after a few thousand pitches you could show up to the Red Sox camp and not do any worse than a guy on a major league roster.

As long as Mirabelli was playing, we all had a shot.

The Globe thinks the Sox will promote Kevin Cash, but I’m not sold on it. Though Cash did an admirable job catching Wakefield in 2007, he hits even worse than Mirabelli and I don’t really see what the point would be of swapping him out for Belli. 

Kottaras has been pretty impressive this spring, and he has experience catching a knuckleball. I kind of hope the Sox roll the dice and see what he can do.

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