Rangers Promote Neftali Feliz!
DavidTR Sullivan is reporting that Neftali Feliz has been promoted (link). He will see action out of the Rangers' bullpen. No word yet on who will be removed from the 25- and 40-man rosters to make room for 21 year old with the triple digit fastball.
Seven reasons to be excited about the promotion of Neftali Feliz:
•MLB.com recently ranked Feliz as the 6th best prospect in baseball (link) after ranking him 9th prior to spring training link
•Kevin Goldstein thinks that Neftali could be the Rangers closer by September link
•Is his fastball really an 80 pitch as some have suggested? That would rank Feliz’ pitch alongside Mariano Rivera’s cutter as one of the most devastating pitches in the game.
•Before the season began, Baseball America liked Feliz even more than Derek Holland link
•After months of mystery, you can decide whether his breaking ball is a slider or a curve. For what it is worth, Neftali says it is a slider link.
•There have been suggestions that Feliz’ change-up is becoming an above average pitch link.
•Since moving to the RedHawks’ bullpen, Feliz has given up 9 hits, 3 walks, and 4 runs while striking out 20 in 15.2 innings. That’s right, he has more strikeouts that hits, walks, and runs combined.
Reader Comments (7)
Good. Now for Smoak. That may mean DFA for Andruw Jones.
I suspect that Smoak is behind Davis if a 1B/DH is called up. At this point, I would be surprised to see Smoak in a Rangers uniform before mid-April next year.
Smoak-maybe in September call-ups, him and Borbon
if they were to promote smoak i would dfa CD
Yeah, good idea Mike, dump Jones. I mean, it's not like he's third on the team in OPS and is one of the few Rangers who knows how to take a walk. Oh, wait...
Actually, I like Jones and what he has accomplished this year. I just think that this year is for the development of the young guys like Feliz and Holland. That probably means that Jones, and ultimately Blalock, are looking like the odd men out. I don't see how you can get the young players in the majors and still have room for guys like Jones. You can't put everybody else on the disabled list forever.
The only player I really want them to get rid of regardless of who comes up is Padilla.
re Jones: does it really matter if you know how to "take a walk" if your OBP is still below .345? It's great that he is hitting for power, but he is the ideal late-inning pinch-hitter.
The guy is hitting .229 - only here would someone try to argue that he is performing well. His OPS is heavily skewed due to his hot April - since then - he is hitting .200 and his OPS is below .800.