Musings @musicandmeaning.com

Oh, the truth will form and fall apart again.
"He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood." – E. M. Forster

Wednesday, 26 March 2003

Goodbye Gio

Aww….

The Dodgers placed Giovanni Carrara on waivers.

They don’t even trade him? That must hurt. Carrara was a stable force for the Dodgers during the past two years as a relief pitcher and emergency starter. And without him, the team wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did last season…or the season before that.

There was an awesome, 16-inning marathon game the team played at Atlanta last year; Brian Jordan, in the first series back in his hometown and against his former team, slugged his second homer of the game to put L.A. up in the top of the 9th, 5-4. But Eric Gagne blew the save (his first of the season) in the bottom of the 9th by giving up the tying home run to former teammate Gary Sheffield. Well, Carrara came in from the bullpen and pitched five amazing shutout innings in relief. The Blue scrapped together another run and Carrara got the win (and, also meaningfully, Jesse Orosco notched his first save since 1999) of the game, which lasted five hours and 19 minutes. (You can check out the box score and story of the game courtesy of USA Today.)

So what if his spring hasn’t sparkled…that’s why it’s called Spring Training. Imagine a team dumping some big multi-million-dollar pitcher if he happened to have a lousy spring but had a good past record. [Okay, so the Astros just released Shane Reynolds…]

I guess it’s the pitfall of having too many pitchers before the season starts. The current popular theory is that Andy Ashby will be moved out of the rotation and into the bullpen as a middle reliever, but he hasn’t pitched in relief since 1993 (!), and frankly, I’m concerned about his consistency, since he won’t have time to get into a groove during a game as a starter. Another possibility is keeping Wilson Alvarez as a middle reliever, but his last truly good season was with the White Sox in 1996, and he had a 5.28 ERA last year with TB. If the team sees something in Alvarez, that’s one thing, but to gamble especially by releasing someone like Carrara…not something I would have done. But I guess that’s why the management gets the big bucks, and I sit here and just write about it.

Undoubtedly, some team will claim Carrara fairly quickly. I hope he does well, as he’s done in the past. Good luck, Gio.

[Update: the Mariners signed Carrara. He’s going back to the AL…I hope he makes the adjustment well.

Also, Wilson Alvarez did not make the Dodgers’ 25-man roster.]

Posted at 12:26 pm | Filed under Baseball, sports

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