Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sweet Lou

Lou Montanez made the most of his debut today as the starting LF going 2-4 with a single and a homer, picking up right where he left off in Bowie. It's imperative that he be given a shot at regular playing time in the next two months, but I'm not sure if I see that happening. Montanez made a fielding error that turned a Mark Teixeira double into a triple, and I doubt that will give Diamond Dave any confidence in letting Montanez start games in CF in place of the injured Adam Jones. I'm assuming that Jay Payton will be there nearly every night.

Trembley juggled the lineup a bit today by sitting Melvin Mora, shifting Aubrey Huff to third, and giving DH responsibilities to Luke Scott. Hopefully if he doesn't trust Montanez in CF (and I'm not sure that he should), Trembley will continue to make an effort to start Montanez four or five days a week by rotating days off for Mora, Huff, and Scott.

I was right yesterday about Chris Waters. He is the new Dave Borkowski or Eric Dubose! The Dave Borkowski that took a shutout into the ninth in his Orioles' debut or the Dubose that pitched to a 3.79 ERA as a part-time starter in 2003, that is. Waters pitched eight innings of shutout ball, allowing just one hit the whole night in a 3-0 win. He's either a poor-man's Brian Burres or a poor-man's Garrett Olson in the long run, so enjoy his good starts while they last.

Markakis hit his 16th HR today off of Ervin Santana. He's good at baseball. So very good.

Wieters Watch

Bowie played a morning game with an 11:05 start time today, and Matt Wieters going 1-3 with 2 BB and his 32nd RBI in 39 games with Bowie. On Tuesday night against Binghamton, Wieters went 1-4 with a single. He's now at .362/.464/.606 for Bowie on the season and .351/.454/.587 on the season.

Prospect guru John Sickels calls Wieters the best prospect in baseball here.


Also in today's game at Bowie, Nolan Reimold went 2-4 with two singles to raise his numbers for the season to .289/.363/.498 at Bowie. As I've said before, he should certainly be in line for a call up to the majors.

Brandon Erbe had a huge night for Frederick last night, combining with two other pitchers on a no-hitter against Salem. Erbe went the first six innings and struck out seven while walking three and hitting two batters. It's the third start this year where Erbe has allowed no runs and either one or zero hits. Erbe has had trouble with the HR ball this year, but if he can keep the ball out of the air a bit more, he's going to have a really strong career.

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