Enjoy the Seattle beer, Vidro!

December 19, 2006

The Vidro for two players (why bother calling them prospects when there’s a very good chance they’ll be on the roster opening day?) deal became official after he passed his physical. This in effect sends Felipe Lopez to 2nd base. I appreciate that they actually asked Lopez if he’d switch first – shows a little more player respect. But there’s one quote that cracked me up from Bowden, “We’re not saying [Lopez] can’t play shortstop…” Umm… well, who did? Either that quote was printed out of context in every article it appeared in or was some weird out of the blue assertion! So okay, that confuses the outfield roulette a little more and should make for an interesting spring training. I’m not even going to begin to speculate at this point. I am dying to hear Snelling speak – gotta love those Aussie accents! I also love the name Emiliano Fruto – very cool. Sadly, Brandon Harper was outrighted to AAA, but I guess that’s not a surprise given the Rule 5 pickup of Jesus Flores.

In addition, the Nationals signed two pitchers – Ray King and Jason Simontacchi cheaply. Whew, that’s a hard last name sure to be butchered in the future! Anyway, King played in the meagerly-covered Japanese/MLB All Star Games with Schneider (and Acta was there as well). He didn’t make the press much or Chris Young’s trip blog (previously mentioned), but it looks like he pitched three times and fared pretty well. The first was an exhibition game which ended in a 7-7 tie where he allowed one run. He pitched in two of the regular games, inheriting 2 runners each time and escaping with 1.1 innings pitched in each. He walked one and allowed two singles. He struck out two and grounded out 5, including a GIDP. I’m cautiously optimistic here, although I’d prefer to be cautiously optimistic about a starting pitcher. Simontacchi hasn’t pitched since 2004, so who knows what the heck he’ll do!

Posted in Players, Washington Nationals