Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Live Blog 4: The other Suzuki steals


Move over Ichiro.

There's a new Suzuki in town.

OK, he's quite a ways south of Seattle in the Bay area, but Oakland's rookie catcher Kurt Suzuki, a darkhorse catcher type for those in AL-only and insane, 18-team leagues, just singled sharply off of Dice-K and stole second base.

I'm not sure what's more startling, a catcher stealing second, or my wife's coffee grinder that just went off (she gets up early often, to go to culinary school). Yowsers. I think that thing just woke up our adjacent neighbors, too. 

Back to Suzuki, who has been targeted because of his 7 HR in 68 at-bats last year. A quick look at his college and minor league stats, shows he did swipe 9 bases in 252 at-bats in 2004 at Cal State Fullerton.

In 2005 and 2006, he attempted 8 steals each year, successful 5 times. So, as you can see, Ichiro doesn't actually have to worry about being passed on the basepaths by another Suzuki and as a fantasy owner, you probably don't want to factor more than 8-10 steals max from this 24-year-old kid.

Suzuki does have pop and Oakland is real high on him, but for my money, I think I'd rather take a late-round flier on a catcher in a better lineup like the Angels' Mike Napoli or hitting in better spot like Arizona's Chris Snyder, who will likely be hitting fifth for the D-Backs after belting 5 HR this spring.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd stay away from the Self-Grinding coffee makers. Yes, it's nice in theory, but it's not worth waking up to the Swat team at your door every morning at 6 am thinking you're testing your latest recipe for a dirty bomb.

Man those things are loud. I hope someone from Cuisinart is a fantasy baseball fan and reading your blog!