Braves close to signing Callaspo

[GovClintonTyree]

I heard they were going to platoon platoons. four players, two positions (2B, 3B), three months (April, June, August) while the other four are in Gwinnett, then reverse for May, July, September.

Each player gets 150 at bats and the ML minimum. On Thursdays, the players with green tags are half off; on Saturdays, blue tags are half off.

They'll make similar arrangements in LF, but four players will share the one position.

At catcher, Bethancourt will start, and be hitting .108 with a 3/50 BB/K ratio on Memorial Day, when they send him to Gwinnett and promote John Buck because they need more contact.

They are considering an eight man pitching staff to allow sufficient roster space for the five platoons.

[Braves1976]

Agreed, at least one of Gosselin / Peterson is sure to make them team so we have a backup SS. I think Gosselin has a better chance of making the team than Jace if they only choose one (which is probably the case if KJ makes the team). Phil being RH will help his cause, and they also won't care about burning his service time in a part time role. They may want Jace to get everyday ABs at AAA to start the season so that can evaluate whether he's an everyday player.

Yea, it may come down to Peterson showing he can hit in Spring Training. He didn't hit at all last Spring with the Padres, then put up pretty much identical numbers in his regular season call-ups. Hopefully he just wasn't ready and maybe not playing regularly hurt him at times too. Further, Gosselin had a strong Spring last year so all he needs to do is repeat that to have a good shot. However, I like Peterson's potential going forward a lot better than Gosselin's potential. I've never been high on Gosselin's potential with the bat, though I do like his defense (more at second than anywhere else, though he was fine at third and did surprisingly OK at short in a small sample). I am just not convinced he'll hit enough in the Majors going forward.

That said, I also don't put a lot of stock in Spring Training numbers (too many bad players have great springs only to stink when it counts while a lot of good players do the reverse due to working on things).