The hometown El Paso Chihuahuas have a blood tie to the New York
Mets. Batting .353 for the AAA Padres affiliate is none other than Chase d’Arnaud, Travis’ older brother. He played in the Pirates organization in 2012
with current Chihuahuas’ manager (and former Met) Rod Barajas. According to Barajas, “Chase works hard every
day and he’s going to give it everything he has.”
The elder d’Arnaud has been around baseball for quite some
time now. At age 30 he probably knows
his professional career is likely of the AAAA variety. Over parts of six seasons with the Pirates,
Braves, Red Sox and Padres he’s amassed only about 500 ABs in total but only
has a .223 AVG with 2 HRs and 31 RBIs to show for it. Unlike Travis, Chase has speed as a part of
his game and has stolen 27 bases at the big league level.
Aware that his dream of playing in the majors as a regular
is probably over, Chase has embraced his other big passion – playing music –
and is the front man for the Chase d’Arnaud band. Originally a violinist, he then switched to bass, and
during his senior year transitioned successfully to guitar. Not merely some celebrity who tinkers at
performing, d’Arnaud has already received some recognition and success, having
opened for Lady Antebellum in 2016 and playing a set at Bonnaroo.
Until his playing days are over, d’Arnaud is content to lead
by example for the younger players coming up through the Padres system. Of his current manager Rod Barajas, Chase
says, “He has a great history in the game, he’s been in the majors and he just
knows how to communicate well with players.”
Of his relationship with little brother Travis, Chase said
that they live near one another in California, stay close and he cherishes the
times they have faced one another in the majors. “Both of us have had great experiences in
baseball and grew up around the game at an early age.”
The younger d’Arnaud has been labeled a fragile bust by most
Mets fans, but he’s quietly coming back with a strong offensive show since the
cold start to the season. Through the
end of May d’Arnaud was hitting just .221 but since then he’s been trending
upwards. For the month of July he was
hitting a far more respectable .263 and has slugged 9 HRs and driven in 33 in
just over 200 Abs. That extrapolates out
to some decent offensive numbers at a position not known for contributing to
scoring runs. If he can keep it up through
the end of the year the Mets might just wait to see what Tomas Nido can become
in 2019 rather than trying to upgrade the position in 2018. Most importantly this year, he's thus far minimized the time on the DL.
4 comments:
I agree there is no reason to think our darnaud can't still be a solid major league starting catcher . Stay healthy and give us 45 more games this season and let's see what Travis can do. It makes just be sweet music to our ears.
I still think the Mets have a lot of work to do to create a playoff team in 2018.
Especially pitching.
I would table the catcher analysis until 2019
Mack I totally agree. We have exactly 1 pitcher who we can count on to pitch into the seventh inning which is just crazy. The fall from "The Best Pitching Staff in the History of Baseball" last winter to the disaster were seeing on the field is monumental so unless MLB is going to expand the rosters to account for the extra relief pitching required to cover this 6 inning madness from starters were in big trouble. Even with Thor back for next year he's only a 6 inning starter and you can flip a coin to pick 3 more starters from the rest. I used to hate the idea of a DH in the National league but if they don't expand the rosters to at least 26 the DH would make sense as we would need less bench players per game and being selfish maybe Wright could actually DH his way to a few more years.
Also can we please see the kids play NOW Sandy. The season is over and were wasting precious time playing Grandy over Nimmo, your first #1 pick by the way, as well as getting Smith, Plawecki and Cecchini up here ASAP. But of course this is more showcasing for waver deals so we probably won't see them till Sept. which is such a shame.
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