Sunday, August 08, 2010

Reaction: Fernando Martinez and Ruben Tejada Called Up

Anyone know why this is? I could see it being spun in one of two ways. Either a) the Mets need an infusion of youth and energy and blah blah blah to make a run at the pennant, or b) the Mets are throwing in the towel. Obviously, the Mets will say option A -- but is it true? It may well be that they believe having Martinez and Tejada around will make them a better team than having Castillo/Cora/Feliciano see time.

Regardless of the motivation behind the move, I am not very optimistic about this. I love seeing Tejada out there at second, and honestly don't care his offensive deficiencies so long as he can hit north of .220 or so - but to me, this is all about Fernando.

You'll find few Fernando Martinez boosters bigger than me. But in my mind, he's taken a big step back this year. I only wanted to see Fernando Martinez back up with the big club again in one of two scenarios: either he's up because he's the best option we have and we are making a playoff run, OR he's up for good. This strikes me as neither. Does bringing up Fernando to platoon with Francoeur help anything (aside from creating a platoon we can call Franc-nando? Fer-coeur? Frartinez!)?

By most objective measures, Fernando has not taken a step forward from his performance in Triple-A last season. He batting a paltry .261/.326/.470 on the season, he's missed time due to injury, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio is just as bad as it was last year. Yes, he's been very hot lately at Buffalo, posting a line of .324/.425/.588 with five walks over his last ten games, but isn't that the kind of hot streak you are supposed to BUILD on, rather than extinguish right away?

I wish I could expound on this further, but I have to say generally that I am not impressed with the move. I wish Fernando would have been left in Triple-A to ride out this streak. Now, he's been promoted to the majors to platoon (albeit the long side of the platoon) and face Roy Halladay and Ubaldo Jimenez in his first two starts.

Hopefully he continues his hot hitting (he was hitting to the tune of an 832 OPS versus RH for the season) but for the most part, I'm confused.

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