Outlaw fans and officials happily welcomed Omar Vizquel back to the fold during spring training. Players and fans joyfully mobbed the popular aging veteran in his return to the clubhouse.
GM Hildebrant reluctantly cut the team's 13-year shortstop before the draft. "We love Omar and everything he brings to the team. But we had an incredible overabundance of talent left over from last year's wonderful draft and there was no way we could fit Omar into this year's pre-draft picture. It's a problem we love to have. We talked to Omar and he understood our predicament, and we committed to pick him up in the draft as soon as it made sense. We want Omar to go out with a World Series ring."
With few holes to plug and Ryan Theriot's 3e16 defense projected to start at shortstop, it made sense to grab Vizquel's gold glove with Outlaw's sixth round pick. "Realistically we don't expect a lot from the plate from Omar this year, but with Vizquel (ss2e7) to Pedroia (2b1e6) to Gonzales (1b1e6) backing up Joakim Soria, we plan to own the ninth inning" says Hildebrant.
Viquel arrived in Outlaw from the Willoughby Fighting Monkees in a 1996 straight-up trade for the Wale's all-time ERA leader Mark Langston, and he never looked back. 6697 AB, 1750 hits, 921 runs, and 374 SB later Omar is still contributing to the team cause.
But offense isn't why Omar lasted in Outlaw. We figure that Omar was involved in about 2000 X-chart decisions throughout his career so far. Over 1800 of these had to be outs, with several hundred of them being of the rally-killing groundball A variety. And then there's those pitching rumors . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment