Bye-Bye Milton; Later, Burton; Hello, Coffey
By
KC2HMZ
Posted at 2:32 pm
I thought about titling this “Celebrating Eric Milton's Triumphant Return To The Operating Room” but that's only half the story here, and it's too long for a title that only tells half the story.
We probably won't have Eric Milton to kick around anymore. He's due for Tommy John surgery on Friday, which means he's finished for the year and probably finished as a Red.
Milton was already on the DL, so we don't get to call up anybody to replace him, BUT since the Reds have also placed Jared Burton on the 15 day DL with back spasms, they do get to call up somebody for that….and that somebody is (drum roll, please) none other than Todd Coffey, who just got sent down on June 8 and would otherwise have had to stay in the minors for at least ten days. But with Burton going on the DL, the Reds can take advantage of an exception to that ten-day rule and call up Coffey anyway, which they've done.
That's the other half of the story. Except that…well, the Reds can't simply option Burton to the minors because he's a Rule 5 guy, who would have to clear waivers and be offered back to Oakland first. But if he's hurt, they can DL him, which gives him a maximum of 30 days in the minors on a rehab assignment when he comes off the DL.
Then again, the first time Milton went on the DL this year, coming out of spring training, it was for back spasms, and now he's going to have a ligament replacement in his elbow (which is what Tommy John surgery is).
So, is this Kriv-Dawg finding a creative way to get around all that Rule 5 red tape and get Burton some additional seasoning in the minors? Or should we be looking forward to the day in August when Doc kremchek looks down at the unconscious Burton on the operating room table, extends his gloved hand toward the OR nurse, and says, “Scalpel” in the usual monotone voice used by surgeons in that situation?
You decide.
Thanks so much for posting on this, HMZ. I have so much other crap going on at home right now, I didn’t know how I was going to have a chance.
Tonight was our first meeting of our new homeowners association. Apparently fence maintenance is quite a hot topic. They asked me to be on the rules and regulations committee, but I think I would be a pretty poor choice, since I don’t have much use for rules.
“What do I care if they paint their mailbox purple?” would be the kind of comment that I’d be likely to make that wouldn’t make me any friends on the committee.
But I digress.
For the record, I don’t think that Jared Burton went on the disabled list so much as the “disabled list,” with the quotation marks being included not for emphasis, as so many people incorrectly do (one of my company’s values on its mission statement is [em]”Active Listening”[/em]), but to indicate irony, a skepticism about his actual disabled status.
Of course, there’s nothing ironic about the list part, so I suppose it ought to be the “disabled” list, which is find so long as you’re spelling it out, but gets to be problematic when you’re abbreviating it:
[em]Today Jared Burton went on the “D”L with back spasms.[/em]
It’s a similar issue to “Weird Al” Yankovic: Shouldn’t it really just be “Weird” Al, since Al is actually his name, or do you quote the whole thing, since both words together act as a nickname?
Ponderous man. Really ponderous.
The day’s Wheelin’ and Dealin’ didn’t end there either. The Reds and Oakland A’s also decided on the other PTBNL in the trade of Denorfia. To go along with McBeth, the Reds got LHP Ben Jukich, who’s 24 and was 3-4 with a 5.40 ERA for the A’s Class-A farm club in Stockton. Good thing we got McBeth before this. Dude’s 24 and still in Class A? With a 5.40 ERA? Not exactly Homer Bailey, is he?
Homeowners associations…Your comment about what color somebody paints their mailbox is spot on. That’s exactly the kind of thing people from homeowners associations gripe about, and will use as an excuse to harass their neighbors. And like you said, who cares? I for one have better things to do than stick my nose in other people’s biz about stuff like that. Now if it’s a suburban bedroom community and they have a dozen goats in their backyard which you can smell for blocks, gimme a call. I’ll happily loan you a 12-gauge to get rid of them (the goats, not the neighbors, although if the user does his/her part, a 12 gauge is quite capable of adequately dealing with both). Otherwise, I’d just as soon leave them alone and have them leave me alone.
Now that we’ve both digressed onto the same topic…glad to earn my keep and get the day’s news up there; The way things have been going lately it’s hard for anybody to keep track of everything. FWIW, I agree with your assessment of Burton going on the DL, it was the same way I felt when they DL’ed Milton coming out of spring training for back spasms, there’s something that just sounds fishy about that. It’s not just you and I either, even John Fay commented on his blog, “The old lower back spasms, eh?”
I guess we know why it took so long to name this player. He was just drafted last year. They couldn’t trade him until now, a year after he signed.
Krivsky [url=http://cincinnati.reds.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070427&content_id=1933650&vkey=news_cin&fext=.jsp&c_id=cin]said[/url] that they were getting two almost major league-ready players. That fits McBeth, but does not seem to be an accurate description of Jukich.
Not that I’m complaining. IMO, McBeth was a more than fair return for Denorfia; anything else is gravy.
Just seems kind of odd that Krivsky would say both were “close to being Major League ready” when one was such a green kid the A’s couldn’t even trade him yet.