Article: The Curious Case of Anthony Slama

Quote:

Originally Posted by gunnarthor

This actually sorta reminds me of the Kila Ka'aihue situation in KC. KC fans demanded that Ka'aihue be brought up - he had dominated the minors (although prospect sites weren't as heavy on him). He got 12 games in the majors at 24, spent all of his age 25 season back in AAA, as well as most of his age 26 season. In 5 seasons at AAA (over 400 games) he had an OPS over .900 while drawing nearly as many walks as strike outs. KC fans were going crazy that he didn't get a shot since KC sorta sucked while letting vets like Mike Jacobs play first base. Things from the FO like his defense is horrible, he has plate issues, he can't hit ML pitching were part of some vast conspiracy by a FO afraid of stats. Of course, he was a disaster at the ML level, traded for a crappy relief pitcher and DFA'd by Billy Beane.

Interesting comparison. I think there are a few differences, though - for one thing, Ka'aihue looked the part of an MLB slugger. 6'4", 235 lb with unquestioned strength, and 4 years of Triple-A Omaha where he absolutely mashed the ball (though undoubtedly with a lot of K's and other holes in his swing). But he was also a 15th round draft pick, and the organization knew that either Billy Butler or Eric Hosmer was going to be their 1B of the future. Ka'aihue did get a cup of tea in the majors and didn't look all that great, but he's still only been in a grand total of 126 MLB games. But yes, more likely than not, he is a prototypical "4-A" player.

Slama doesn't look the part of an MLB reliever, or even a successful AAA reliever, for that matter. You can look at Ka'aihue and imagine him hitting 30 HR's, albeit with a terrible average, but you can't look at a sub-90 mph fastball and imagine Slama having a 9.00 K/9. Yet, the success is there, and very consistently so in AAA baseball. And unlike Ka'aihue, it's not like you have to take playing time away from Billy Butler or Eric Hosmer to put Anthony Slama in the Twins bullpen. You simply have to remove a Jeff Gray-type reliever and give Slama a bunch of mopup time in meaningless games to get some prolonged sense of whether his "stuff" works on real hitters or not.

That's what makes it so frustrating in the case of Slama that they haven't done that - nobody can tell what the downside is, even if the upside may not be all that great.

Slama only gets guys out but he doesn't look good doing it? I thought we stopped thinking like that since Brad Pitt won twenty games in a row. It's not like Slama would be taking a job away from a real major-leaguer or might cost the Twins a title. Give him a shot. Let him succeed or fail. At least let him enjoy ML per diem for a while. I don't get the hostility toward him.

Top 5 Reasons Anthony Slama has not been called up:

1.) Mistakenly put in witness protection after witnessing "twin-killing" at second base.
2.) Dyslexic Front Office keeps trying to call up Anthony Salma.
3.) Porn mustache freaks out everyone but Pavano.
4.) Twins waiting for challenged fans in left field to figure out how to update the "K" signs first.
5.) Lack of ability to pitch to contact.

Another outing like tonight's should remove any doubt about Perdomo's future.