Pickoff

I was told by my friend Ron that Calvin Pickering was designated for assignment on Tuesday and is therefore off the Royals 40-man roster.

It's no secret that I've been a big fan of Pickering because of his ability to walk and mash the ball which he showed in AAA last year. This year he made the club out of spring training over Ken Harvey but was then sent back down after only 16 games and 27 at bats. Clearly he was horrible in those 27 at bats striking out 14 times but 16 games is not a real trial and it makes me wonder whether they brought him up more as a way to light a fire under Harvey than to really see what he could do.

Anyway, Pickering hit very poorly at Omaha in his first 50-100 at bats and at one point was 3 for 33 with 7 walks. He ended at .275 with 23 homeruns and 67 RBIs in 92 games. [Quick Rant: Why don't minor league teams keep their entire team's statistics on their web sites (or Baseball America for that matter)? Once a player is released or moved to another team his stats go away making it very hard to find out what he did at a different level? I can't wait for MLBAM to consolidate the minor league stats on their web site, hopefully they'll do a better job.]

At 28, Pickering could still be valuable off the bench for somebody who wants to take a chance on him. I think the Royals made a big mistake by not bringing him up early last year and seeing what he could really do when he was swinging the bat well. Instead he got just 140 major league plate appearances (and has still had only 280 or so in his career) and was not used regularly when he was up.