If you wondered why the Orioles would trade their 2006 Brooks Robinson Award winner (minor leaguer of the year) Cory Keylor for 37-year-old backup catcher Alberto Castillo, your question was answered this week.
Starting receiver Ramon Hernandez strained his left oblique in last week’s exhibition game in Norfolk and is listed as day-to-day. With Hernandez’s status in doubt, the Orioles quickly recalled Castillo from the minors to back up backup catcher Paul Bako, who is the starter until further notice. Neither Bako (career .236 hitter) nor Castillo (.222) hit much, but both have had long pro careers based upon the ability to catch and throw.
So, what’s a left oblique? If you’d asked me that question as recently as 10 years ago, I would have been oblivious. Obviously, it’s a ribcage (abdominal) muscle pull, but that description is now obsolete. Not to obsess about it, but if you’ve been observant at all, with nothing obstructing your quest to obtain even the most obscure of previously obfuscated facts, knowing what an oblique is becomes obligatory.
Somehow, I doubt that Gus Triandos ever strained his oblique, left or right.
The Keylor-for-Castillo transaction tells us a couple of things: First of all, the ballclub doesn’t see Eli Whiteside as having much of a big-league future. The Delta State product turns 28 this year and has only nine big-league games on his résumé, all in 2005. He can likely play another five-plus years in the minors if that’s his choice since, as we’ve seen with Castillo, there always seems to be a job for a catcher in someone’s organization.
As for Keylor, like Whiteside, he turns 28 later this year and has likely reached the point in his career where he’s trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life. The Ohio University product had a good year at Bowie in 2006, batting .294 with 10 home runs and 68 RBI. However, he’s not a base stealer and doesn’t hit left-handed pitching very well. He’s had a string of injuries in the minors, and at his age, has simply passed the prospect stage. Frankly, the minor leagues are full of singles-hitting outfielders who can’t run and may never get that elusive cup of coffee in the major leagues.
It’s going to take another few years for the Orioles’ farm system to resume cranking out the big-league products they used to do routinely. Baltimore had three players on Baseball America’sTop 100 Prospects list: Infielder Billy Rowell (No. 47), and right-handed pitchers Brandon Erbe (No. 78) and Pedro Beato (No. 99), and all three are projected to be ready for Camden Yards by 2009. Assuming Erik Bedard, Adam Loewen, Daniel Cabrera and Hayden Penn all improve with age, the pitching outlook heading into the next decade ? barring any disastrous transactions ? starts to resemble those staffs of 30-40 years ago.
I’d love to be able to fill some additional inches of column space today, but you might think I was being obtuse.
Phil Wood has covered sports in the Washington-Baltimore market for more than 30 years. You can reach him at [email protected].
