Cincinatti might lose Ramon Hernandez via Free Agency if they all don't see eye-to-eye about the team exercising their buy-out option, and then re-signing him to a new deal. Josh Thole is projected to be the starting catcher in the future, but no matter how you look at it, that year is not going to be next year. Omar Santos should be our back-up, but as of right now, the catcher FA list isn't all that impressive. Hernandez is coming off of a season plagued with injuries, so he's not going to be getting outrageous deals by various clubs. Last season, his WAR was only .5, but, on average, before last season, his WAR was 2.5- which is a lot better than Santos, of course, and a bunch of the other FA catchers out there. A WAR in that range is certainly possible if he's recovered from his knee injuries and surgery and all that. He's also a bit younger than a lot of the other catcher FAs out there. Thoughts?

This show sounds really really cool

"Here’s what one scout who watched Familia closely said about him: "He’s got arm strength, that’s it. Great kid. Arm strength. Bad delivery. No breaking ball. Walked six guys the outing I saw him. Everything in delivery messed up. Was up to 95 mph. Doesn’t get through with his back side, no real balance, misses up in zone because doesn’t follow through/finish. He can’t because of the rest of stuff that’s going on."

Sorry for making yet another thread discussing BA's Top 10 but this response regarding Familia's ranking really perplexed me. From watching just one start, the scout not only is able to trash Jeurys mechinics as well as call him a one dimensional pitcher but convince Rubin and whoever else helped with the list to not consider Familia for the Top 10.

Here's my problem though. First of all, looking at Familia's game logs, Familia has never walked 6 batters in a game in his career. There was one start where he walked 5 in his first start in May. So maybe he's talking about this start and the scout was off by one, no big deal right? Well, to me it is. If the scout can vividly recall that he "doesn’t get through with his back side" and his other claims, he should also have remembered the walks, I would think.

More importantly, I don't understand how one start is any kind of sample size to make the claims the scout makes. I mean sure his job is to be confident about what he sees in select viewing but shouldn't Rubin be pointing out the problem with basing opinions on one start, I mean Felix Hernandez and Johan both walked 6 batters this year and I would think scouts in the stands would be able to question their mechanics on those given days.

Ranting aside, Familia was 19 years old this season. He threw 140 innings with a 7.02 K/9, 2.96 BB/9, 0.19 HR/9!, and a 48.8% GB rate. If poor mechanics get these results, I'll take it.

Our core values now apparently?

Omar = don't even think about it.

Did someone say "parade" ??

Cue AA's one Jermaine Dye fanatic . . .

Very surprised about #10.

Sad, really. However, that's got to be some sort of team record for most fans killed outside of home ballpark during a single season.