Monthly Archives: January 2012

Tyler Moore, the former Mississippi State, Meridian Community College and Northwest Rankin High standout, is learning the ropes in the outfield, which should enhance his chances of making the majors with Washington. Moore, a longtime first baseman who blasted 31 homers each of the last two seasons in the minors, spent a couple of weeks playing outfield in instructional league in the fall and has been working recently with Nationals coach Bo Porter on some of the finer points of fly chasing. “I’m excited about getting to play out there,” Moore said. “I don’t care where I play if it helps me get to the big leagues.” Moore will go to big league camp next month as a 40-man roster member. Washington, which has been courting free agent Prince Fielder, has veteran Adam LaRoche penciled in as its starting first baseman and signed the versatile Mark DeRosa as a potential backup there. Chris Marrero, another first base prospect, is going to miss the start of the 2012 season with an injury. Moore likely will start this year in Triple-A, though another tour in Double-A, as an outfielder, is possible.
P.S. Starkville native Julio Borbon has helped Escogido move to the top of the pack in the Dominican Winter League playoffs. Borbon, a Texas Rangers outfielder, went 2-for-3 and scored twice as the leadoff batter in an 8-2 win on Monday. He is hitting .250 overall. Borbon will be trying to reestablish himself in Texas’ plans this spring. He was the Rangers’ primary center fielder in 2010, when he batted .276 and stole 15 bags. But he slumped last year, got hurt and was sent to the minors. He hit .298 with 16 steals in 131 at-bats at Triple-A Round Rock.

The rumor has finally become reality. Seth Smith, the former Ole Miss standout from Jackson, will be changing teams — and leagues — this season. Colorado dealt the 29-year-old outfielder to Oakland for two pitchers. Smith hit .284 with 15 homers for the Rockies in 2011, but he became expendable when they signed free agent outfielder Michael Cuddyer. Colorado was looking for arms and may have landed two pretty good ones. Right-hander Guillermo Moscoso was 8-10 with a 3.38 ERA last season, and lefty Josh Outman, who spent some time in the minors in 2011, was 3-5 with a 3.70 with the big league club. Smith, a lefty who can play right or left field, is a .275 career hitter (over four-plus years) and will surely help the low-budget A’s, who seem to be in constant rebuilding mode.

Today’s subject: Steve Pegues. Pegues was one of those “toolsy” athletes whose failure to stick as a major leaguer is something of a head-scratcher. A 6-foot-2, 190-pound outfielder from Pontotoc, he played pro ball for 12 years and in eight different organizations. He got into 100 major league games and hit .266 with six home runs. Drafted in the first round by Detroit in 1987, Pegues made slow progress in the low minors and was claimed on waivers in 1992 by San Diego. He finally stamped himself as a prospect later that year when he recorded a record 68 hits in the Arizona Fall League. In 1993, at Triple-A Las Vegas, Pegues batted .352 with nine homers in 68 games. But the Padres never called him up, and he signed with Cincinnati as a free agent in 1994. He made his big league debut with the Reds that year and put up a .361 average in 18 games. But the Reds let him go that same summer, and he signed with Pittsburgh. He spent the 1995 season in the majors with the Pirates. His numbers: .246, six homers in 82 games. That was his shot. He never got back. He played three more years, bouncing through four more organizations and making a brief independent league appearance. Pegues’ minor league stats were good: .285, 64 homers, 443 RBIs, 141 steals. To make it in the majors, you just have to be that much better.

At this stage of his life, with his baseball playing career in the rearview mirror, Aaron Holbert figured he would be a forensic pathologist.
Or a crime scene investigator. Maybe a pharmacist.
“Those three things interested me,” Holbert said in a recent interview.
Yet six years after he last played a game, the 38-year-old California native finds himself still very much in the game. He’ll manage the Double-A Mississippi Braves in 2012 with four seasons of managerial experience under his belt and a seemingly bright future ahead in the profession.
Holbert was named the Carolina League manager of the year last season as the skipper of the Cleveland Indians’ Class A Kinston (N.C.) club, and Baseball America selected him as the manager on its Advanced Class A postseason All-Star team.
The Atlanta Braves hired him in October to run their Double-A club, which has produced a ton of major league talent over seven seasons in Pearl but has made the Southern League playoffs just twice, the last time in 2008.
“It’s a big challenge for me and the staff, too,” said Holbert, who will be assisted by returning coaches Mike Alvarez and Garey Ingram. “As a young manager in my first year of Double-A ball, first year with the Braves and in the National League, with the double switches … all that’s intriguing. I’m up for the challenge.”
Before 2005, Holbert would never have predicted this career path.
“If I didn’t make it as a major league player, I thought I’d go back to school and pursue some other career,” he said.
But when he was playing in the Cincinnati Reds organization in ’05 — a season in which he spent 22 games in the big leagues — Holbert began to hear “rumblings” from Reds brass.
“Different people were telling me, ‘You’d make a great coach when you retire,’” he said. “I’d never thought about (working in baseball) before that, but from then on it was in my mind.”
He spent most of the 2005 season at Triple-A Louisville, where his manager was Rick Sweet, who managed the old Jackson Generals in 1991 and ’92.
“I started to pay closer attention to how he ran the games,” Holbert said. “I’d sit next to him and ask him things. … I’m grateful to him for taking me under his wing. He allowed me to look inside his mind. Some of the things I do came from him.”
Holbert rattles off George Kissell, Joe Pettini, John Goryl, Bruce Fields and Gary Thurman as other influences on his managerial style.
He formally set off on that path in 2006, after an injury in spring training left him as “the odd man out” in the Louisville infield.
“Johnny Almarez, the Reds’ farm director at the time who’s now with the Braves, asked me if I wanted to try a coaching job, and I said OK,” Holbert said. “I went to the Gulf Coast League as an extra coach. The next year I was the hitting coach in Billings (Mont.), and in 2008, I got the chance to manage with Cleveland (at low-A Lake County in Ohio) and jumped on it.
“I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
And he appears to have an aptitude for pushing the right buttons.
His first Lake County team reached the South Atlantic League championship round and his Kinston clubs were in the postseason both years he was there.
Holbert managed against the Braves’ Carolina League club the last two years, so he already has some familiarity with many of the players he’ll likely have in 2012. Pitcher Zeke Spruill, outfielders Mycal Jones and Cory Harrilchak, highly touted shortstop Andrelton Simmons and first baseman Joe Terdoslavich are among that group.
Holbert, who attended Atlanta’s Florida instructional league camp in the fall, will be the first M-Braves manager not to have a background in the Atlanta system. He said he was enticed by Atlanta’s offer to manage at the Double-A level, calling it “a great opportunity to be part of this respected organization.”
“I fully acknowledge that I have things to learn and I’m willing to lean on my staff when I need them,” Holbert said. “I want to become a better manager and prepare the players the best we can for Triple-A and to help the big league club.”
The presumption is that Holbert will bring a youthful exuberance to the M-Braves’ clubhouse as well as a keen understanding of minor league life.
He played in 1,542 minor league games over 17 seasons. He was a first-round draft pick — 18th overall — out of Long Beach, Calif., by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1990. He passed through Jackson in 1994, playing shortstop for the Double-A Arkansas Travelers in 1994.
He made it to the big leagues in 1996 but got into just one game with the Cardinals. He didn’t make another major league appearance until 2005 with the Reds.
“I can relate to the younger players,” Holbert said. “I understand what it’s like to go on those bus rides, to live on $20 meal money, to be away from your family so much. To have a staff that can relate to all that … it makes it easier to get things across to the players.”
Holbert’s debut with the M-Braves will be April 5 at Trustmark Park.

Reports say that the Texas Rangers met with Prince Fielder today. If they sign the free agent first baseman, former Mississippi State standout Mitch Moreland is essentially out of a job in Texas. He’d likely be traded, and, coming off a pretty good first full season in the big leagues (.259, 16 homers, 51 RBIs), it figures there’d be some interest. But rosters are filling up. Miami is one of the six alleged suitors for Cuban sensation Yoenis Cespedes. He’s a center fielder. If he signs with the Marlins, that would make it all the more problematic for Ole Miss product Chris Coghlan to stay with Miami. Coghlan, the 2009 National League rookie of the year, was the Marlins’ opening day center fielder in 2011. He slumped (.230 in 65 games), got hurt and wound up in the minors. There may be a trade in his future, too.
P.S. Spring training is fast approaching, and the likes of Roy Oswalt, Fred Lewis, Marcus Thames, Matt Tolbert, Bill Hall and Joey Gathright are unsigned. Stay tuned.

There’s never a dull moment in the Caribbean, it seems. Former Mississippi Braves infielder Luis Hernandez (now in the Texas organization) homered on Thursday to help Aragua win in the Venezuelan playoffs. In the Mexican Pacific League postseason, ex-Jackson Generals star Daryle Ward went deep in a victory for Guasave, and ex-M-Brave Barbaro Canizares and Alcorn State product Corey Wimberly (recently signed by the New York Mets) had three hits each in Obregon’s win. On Wednesday, onetime M-Braves lefty Francisley Bueno threw five shutout innings a win for Licey in the Dominican Winter League postseason, and ex-General Julio Lugo had a four-hit night for Escogido.
P.S. West Lauderdale High and Meridian Community College alumnus Paul Phillips has signed a minor league deal with Milwaukee. The well-traveled catcher spent last season in Triple-A with Cleveland. He has played 91 big league games over the last eight years, including 12 with Colorado in 2010.

Noticed on a perusal of the Baseball America minor league transactions chart that former Alcorn State star Corey Wimberly has signed a minor league contract with the New York Mets. Wimberly, who can play second base or the outfield, is a .297 career hitter with 274 steals in seven minor league seasons. He spent 2011 at Triple-A in the Pittsburgh system, hitting .228 in an injury-shortened campaign. Now 28, he is still looking for that first big league shot. The Mets released former Mississippi State infielder Jet Butler, who bogged down in A-ball. A more noteworthy release: Atlanta cut loose outfielder/second baseman Willie Cabrera, who spent parts of four seasons with the Mississippi Braves and was something of a fan favorite. He hit .306 in 2010 but wound up back in Double-A again last summer after an all-too-brief trial in Triple-A. Two other ex-M-Braves have found new homes: Baltimore signed outfielder Antoan Richardson, who got a big-league cup of coffee with the Braves last season, and reliever Stephen Marek, who has a 3.44 minor league ERA but can’t seem to stay healthy, inked with Toronto.

Today’s subject: Cleo James. The Clarksdale native had a largely undistinguished major league career, batting .228 in 381 at-bats over parts of four seasons. Born in the Mississippi Delta, he grew up in California and signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1961. It took him seven years to make the big leagues. The Chicago Cubs drafted him from the Dodgers and he played somewhat regularly for them in 1970 and ’71, batting .287 in the latter season as a platooning outfielder on a star-studded club with Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Ole Miss alum Don Kessinger, Glenn Beckert, Ferguson Jenkins, et. al. James hit .296 in his minor league career, stealing as many as 46 bases in a season and hitting 11 homers in another. He just couldn’t reproduce those numbers in The Show. But James can claim this bit of trivia: He is one of only two players in MLB history to go by the name Cleo. The other was Cleo Carlyle, who played for the Boston Red Sox in 1927.

His numbers improved (a little), but former Mississippi State standout Rafael Palmeiro is still locked out of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Palmeiro, whose otherwise stellar career was tainted by a failed drug test near the end, was named today on 13 percent of the writers’ ballots. That’s up from 11 percent last year in his first time on the ballot. It takes 75 percent to make the Hall; former Cincinnati Reds shortstop Barry Larkin was the only player to make the cut this year. Palmeiro topped 500 home runs and 3,000 hits, Hall of Fame numbers, to be sure. But the suspicion about how much those numbers were boosted by illegal performance enhancing drugs may be too much for Palmeiro to ever overcome.
P.S. Former Bulldogs left-hander Paul Maholm reportedly is close to signing with the Chicago Cubs, a team he pitched against many times as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Maholm is 53-73 with a 4.36 ERA for his career, all of which had been spent with the lowly Bucs. He would be a good No. 4 or 5 starter for the rebuilding Cubs.

The winter league news keeps rolling in (thank goodness): Former Mississippi Braves left-hander Francisley Bueno out-pitched big leaguer Francisco Liriano in a Dominican Winter League postseason game on Wednesday. M-Braves alumnus Donell Linares backed Bueno’s six shutout innings with an RBI double in Licey’s 3-0 win. Meanwhile, in Venezuela, ex-M-Braves center fielder Gorkys Hernandez homered in a playoff win for Caribes. And in the Mexican Pacific League postseason, Alcorn State product Corey Wimberly scored twice and drove in a run to fuel Obregon’s 9-8 win over Guasave, which got a homer from former Jackson Generals star Daryle Ward.
P.S. On the subject of ex-M-Braves, lefty Jo-Jo Reyes has signed a minor league deal with Pittsburgh. Reyes, who first made The Show with Atlanta in 2007, has bounced around the past couple of years, including big league stints with Toronto and Baltimore.