Many are unfamiliar with the paternity leave status available
to MLB ballplayers. A player can opt to
take from 1-3 games away from the team to attend to the birth of his
child. Jay Bruce will do that after the
game today and fly to Texas to be with his wife. He's planning on a 3-game break.
That brings up an interesting hypothetical for the
Mets. They are entitled to replace him
on the roster for those games. In
perusing the 40-man roster, the obvious choices would be Gavin Cecchini, Dom
Smith and Phil Evans. Of those three,
Evans would likely get the nod because he can play outfield whereas the others
do not. Of course, the fact he’s hitting
a mere .240 to Smith’s .279 and Cecchini’s .302 would make sense in a Mets
collective world view. However, if you
consider that the outfield is likely some combination of Michael Conforto,
Brandon Nimmo and Juan Lagares, (assuming Yoenis Cespedes will require more
rest for his quad), then the spare part from Vegas will likely not play very
much.
If Cespedes was indeed healthy (and Hansel Robles is not),
then they might have opted to go shorthanded on the bench and instead bring up
a pitcher. There your obvious options
would be Buddy Baumann, Jacob Rhame, Jamie Callahan, P.J. Conlon or Chris
Flexen. Baumann is a lefty and currently
not having a disastrous start to his Las Vegas career with a 1.93 ERA over 4 IP
for the 51s after turning in a 0.00 over 8 games for the El Paso Chihuahuas
earlier in the year. Given that neither
Rhame nor Callahan in brief trials opened eyes (in a good way) and Callahan is
struggling to keep his ERA under 10.00, that would make Baumann possibly a good
candidate for a brief trial. Both Conlon
and Flexen have been starters and would be miscast in a bullpen role. It’s highly unlikely they would burn an
option on Tyler Bashlor from AA for just a few days of service.
Of course with a vacancy on the 40-man roster now given
Anthony Swarzak’s transfer to the 60-day DL yesterday, the best solution would
be to bring up Tim Peterson who is continuing his two year run of pitching
domination. The 27-year old has hit a
hiccup lately seeing his ERA rise from Bob Gibson like numbers to 3.18, but
batters are still just hitting .161 against him and he has an otherworldly WHIP
of 0.88. Having a reliable arm would allow
time for a less reliable arm’s knee to heal (sorry, but it’s the truth,
Hansel).
If I’m a betting man they will simply go shorthanded. After all, plane tickets from Las Vegas ain’t
cheap (and some organizations are).
3 comments:
Not sure there is an opening on the 40 man roster, I think they added Luis Guillorme with it.
Rob, Guillorme was added in November to avoid being open to the Rule 5 draft. However, Bruce going on paternity leave would be the equivalent of a player being suspended or “unavailable”, so for those games that he misses, a team can install another player. However, I’m wondering if that player has to go through waivers when Bruce is re-instated.
The METS currently do not have an Open spot available on the 40-man roster. The sequence of events are as follows. M.Harvey is DFA'd and is Off the 40-man, then on Monday prior to the Trade for D.Mesoroco, the METS add PJ.Conlon to the 40-man spot vacated by M.Harvey. After the Trade is completed, A.Swarzak is moved to the 60-day DL from the 10-day DL to open a spot on the 40-man roster for D.Mesoroco. Someone will be DFA'd off the 40-man when A.Swarzak returns from the DL, which could be at the end of May.
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