Saturday, March 22, 2014

All kinds of tranzactionz

Big goings on today in Astros camp as the regular season gets down-under way (get it?). As an aside, I had every intention of watching the season opener at 3am. I went to bed at a reasonable time, and the daughter woke up at 2:30. I got her taken care of, and put her back down at 2:45, sat on the couch ready to go and...fell asleep. Woke up at 7:00. Any of y'all watch?

Anyhow, let's run down everything that has happened in the last 15 hours.

*Peter Moylan tore his UCL, and is likely headed for another Tommy John surgery (he had a first in 2008).

*The Astros optioned lefty reliever Darin Downs to OKC and reassigned Gregorio Petit and Japhet Amador to minor-league camp. As Drellich noted, if the Astros are going to have a 2nd lefty out of the bullpen (assuming Kevin Chapman is the primary lefty), it's going to be Raul Valdez - who doesn't have any options left. It also looks likely that Jesus Guzman and Marc Krauss are going to make the team.

*The Astros released J.D. Martinez.

This saddens me. Because for a couple of years it was really fun to do the minor-league recaps, as Martinez pretty much always hit. From 2009-11 Martinez never posted a minor-league OPS under .939. But it just didn't translate to the Majors. Martinez had a .742 OPS in his major-league debut, but declined to .685 in 2012 and .650 in 2013.