Bay or Davis, Wilson or Castillo

One more post on Emeigh's pre-season essay at Baseball Primer.

Emeigh argues:

There's no obvious reason why Jason Bay should be getting a shot ahead of JJ Davis or Tony Alvarez , or Jack Wilson should continue to play SS while Jose Castillo gets moved into a competition with Bobby Hill and Freddy Sanchez (in which he's running third).

This strikes me as hyperbolic - sure there are a few obvious reasons why to go with Bay and not Davis, Wilson and not Castillo. When the Pirates acquired him, Bay was a 24-year-old Andre Thornton clone who just put up a 958 OPS on 300+ at-bats in AAA. J.J. Davis, who is the same age as Bay, was clobbering the ball in AAA himself, finishing his Nashville tour with a 898 OPS on 400+ at-bats. Both these guys look ready for primetime, but Bay came over in the Giles trade, and the fans would like to see him now. That may not be the best reason, but it is an obvious one.

Jose Castillo or Jack Wilson? Castillo is 23 and he couldn't slug .400 at Altoona last year. His defense at second base was not good, either. Jack Wilson is 26, he has a slick glove at short, and he has 1500 major-league at-bats under his belt. He will cost the Pirates 1.85M this year. The Bucs could save about 1.5M by handing the job to a healthy minor-leaguer like Jose Castillo, but if the minor-leaguer flops (we have horrors of Chad Hermansen burned into our mind - remember that), where are we going to find a suitable replacement? Castillo is a guy who hasn't hit better than Wilson in the minors, and his defense is not as good. As a team that is developing a group of young pitchers, why take a chance with a player whose defense has been shaky in the minor leagues? Also, if Wilson improves a little bit, and stays healthy, he may also be attractive at the trade deadline.

The Pirates have a ton of quality minor-league ballplayers, but that does not mean that the successful rebuilding strategy is to promote them all to the major leagues and give them playing time that they haven't yet earned. Play Wilson, play Cota, play Davis, play Castillo, start the young ones. If the Bucs were to heed every call to ditch the vet for the young guy, we'd have a junior-varsity squad on the field, and the results could only be disastrous in the short-term. Is mass humiliation the quickest way to develop a team of young ballplayers? Has that ever worked?