Go Botts.
Mike Lamb was an accomplished minor league hitter, a doubles machine with a career line of .310/.372/.495 on the farm. He broke into the big leagues at age 24, the first of four straight seasons that he would split between Texas and Oklahoma.
The third of those seasons was 2003, the first full year of Hank Blalock's big league career and of Buck Showalter's tenure as Rangers manager. After averaging more than 360 big league at-bats in 2000, 2001, and 2002, Lamb got only 38 at-bats with Texas in 2003, when he spent the majority of the year in AAA on his final option. In those 38 at-bats, he hit a punchless .132/.190/.132.
With Blalock entrenched at third base, Mark Teixeira at first, Herbert Perry under contract, and Adrian Gonzalez getting close, Lamb's fate was virtually sealed following the 2003 season. About two weeks before pitchers and catchers were to report in 2004, the Rangers designated the 28-year-old Lamb for assignment so that they could put righthander Carlos Almanzar on the 40-man roster to prevent him from taking an offer to pitch in Japan.
Seven days later, Texas traded Lamb to the Yankees for minor league righthander Jose Garcia. Lamb didn't even finish spring training with New York, which traded him late in March to Houston for an equally forgettable minor leaguer named Juan DeLeon.
It was at that point that Lamb carved out a meaningful major league career, averaging 12 home runs in just 323 at-bats annually over four years with the Astros. He's not Wade Boggs, but he's now in his ninth season as a major league ballplayer and has been a factor in the post-season (slugging .675 in 40 at-bats).
Jason Botts probably won't be Travis Hafner -- but then again Hafner wasn't supposed to do what he has done, either -- but he doesn't need to be. If he's Lee Stevens or Jack Cust, that's fine. Maybe he's even Lamb, a selective, professional hitter who hasn't nailed down a defensive position and who hasn't slugged at the big league level the way he looked like he might as he was coming up, but who could contribute for a long time.
What I don't understand is why the 38 at-bats Botts got in April were considered conclusive. Yes, he has had 282 big league at-bats and hasn't been productive enough with them (.230/.325/.344), but that half-season equivalent has been spread out over four years, with the at-bats coming in fits and starts. It stands to reason that a hitter whose game is built on the handling of the strike zone probably depends on rhythm and consistent work more so than a see-it, rake-it type would.
Has Botts been too selective, letting too many strikes go by? Unquestionably. But why commit to giving him regular work for just two weeks and then decide the audition isn't worth continuing? That aspect of this move resembles Lamb less than it does Doug Davis, who was designated for assignment at age 27 (to make room for bullpen lefty Erasmo Ramirez) after one ineffective emergency start in April 2003 -- with the team four games under .500, five games out, and in last place -- that had followed four years of ups and downs with Texas (along with very good results in Oklahoma). In each of the four seasons after Texas dumped Davis, he has won in double digits, on teams that had only one winning record in those four years.
Given where this team stands (the Rangers have the worst record in the league), I don't get the deference to Ben Broussard (.173/.244/.293, zero RBI's since the season-opening road trip, subpar defense at first base), especially since he's almost certain to be somewhere else next season. There's a point to figuring out what you might have in Botts, whether or not the club has decided it knows that answer. Is there a point to seeing whether Broussard can break out of this slump that started in Surprise and hasn't let up? (Seattle decided yesterday that it no longer needed Brad Wilkerson and his guaranteed $3 million around.) With Chris Shelton up in conjunction with the Botts move, Broussard hasn't played. Why keep him?
Going with Sidney Ponson rather than Doug Mathis at this point is more understandable, because it doesn't cost you Mathis.
I get the .158/.304/.395 Botts line. I get that it's not a good set of numbers and that there might be issues with mechanics or approach or something else which might be as convincing to a seasoned scout as they are lost on most people who aren't seasoned scouts. Maybe baseball people think that Botts not only won't be Hafner but won't be or Cust, either, or Stevens, or Lamb.
The reason, I think, that the fan reaction to the removal of Botts from the roster has been more vocal than it was four years ago with Lamb is that Botts physically looks so much like what an impact, damage-creating, offensive monster is supposed to look like. (Lamb, on the other hand, some say, has the misfortune of looking like me.) I think what I'd always hoped the switch-hitting Botts could eventually provide was what the Stevens/Mike Simms duo gave Texas in 1998: a combined line of .275/.345/.547 in 530 at-bats, with 36 home runs and 105 RBI. But even when it started to look like Botts projected to be something else, I was optimistic. Partly because I wanted to be.
As diehard fans of a baseball franchise we want the products of our own system to make it. Familiarity is a factor, as is the payroll containment that the influx of young players permits, but there's more to it. Seeing the players that your team signed as amateurs get to the big leagues and establish themselves is *evidence.* It's evidence that your team is skillful at developing major league baseball players, and the more, the better. Nothing provides more confidence to a fan, especially of a team in a building phase, than seeing that its scouts and coaches can find a 17th-rounder like Ian Kinsler and make him what he is today, or a Day Two draft-and-follow like Hafner or Botts or A.J. Murray or Zach Phillips or Derek Holland.
I'm a fan of Botts as a person. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not objective about him (and I've said that in writing many times), and that if he'd had 2,820 major league at-bats rather than 282, I'd still hold out hope that he was just another week or two away from really locking in and doing to big league pitchers what he's done to AAA pitchers (.302/.401/.541 over three seasons). I'm biased.
I don't know what league perception is of Botts, but I'm not pulling for him to clear waivers. Why? Because even if he did clear and the Rangers outrighted him to Oklahoma, he'd certainly be behind the unconscious Nelson Cruz in line to get another shot in Texas, even if he were to rake like he always does in AAA. Plus, Chris Davis could be a RedHawk before long.
The reality is that management here -- right or wrong -- doesn't think Botts fits or that he will, and so it seems unlikely that he'd command a return spot on the 40-man roster later this season or immediately after it, and if he's not on the roster in mid-October he'll be able to leave the organization as a six-year minor league free agent (and, given the circumstances, he'd obviously do exactly that). I'd like to see Botts traded or claimed on waivers, landing with a new team intent on giving him a fresh start. (That can be short-lived, of course -- Tampa Bay, for instance, claimed first baseman Dan Johnson on waivers on April 18 after Oakland designated him for assignment, and the Rays then designated him for assignment just five days later.)
I don't pretend that I see things that scouts don't see. I don't pretend that I see things that scouts *do* see. Maybe the Botts swing is irreparably long and maybe his patience at the plate has become so pronounced that it's a flaw rather than an asset. But I've never been objective about that player and can't start to be now.
I believe in the people who make personnel decisions for my team, and I always count on the decisions they make to be the right ones -- even if at times I don't understand them. But at the same time, there are a handful of other teams' players that I pull for who got their starts in this organization, this organization that was smart enough to draft them and skilled enough to develop them, and Jason Botts goes right to the top of that list. It makes me no less of a fiercely loyal Rangers fan to hope that wherever Botts lands, something will click and he'll become the player that I'd always imagined he'd become here.
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