In my latest installment of “where are they now”, I’ve come across six players who were in camp late into March last year and I decided they deserved a little recognition.
     First up is Aquilino Lopez. He did pretty much anything you could want out of a reliever last year. He pitched a career high 78.1 innings over the course of 48 games, which is the only time besides 2003 with the Blue Jays that he hung around for that much of a season in the bigs. His 2008 stats include a 4-1 record with a 3.55 ERA. These were his first ML wins since 2004, and also managed to lower his career ERA to 3.78. While many have said over the offseason that the numbers are skewed, I don’t see what they see. Only 2 unearned runs were scored against him. Opponents hit .277 against him and only one blown save. Maybe the Tigers thought he could have done a better job. Maybe he was one of the many casualties of the economic crunch of free agents. Oh, by the way, he’s still looking for a job this spring.
     Second on today’s list is Max St. Pierre. I don’t have much on him other than he is on his second stint in the Tigers organization. While he was gone, the Brewers tried to make a pitcher out of him. He’s in camp this year as one of four or so non-roster invites at catcher. My opinion is that he goes 1 and 1A with Dane Sardinha. Add Dusty Ryan to the mix and the 3rd catcher/first callup for injury becomes a log jam that doesn’t work in St. Pierre’s favor at the moment. He’s going to need to be electric this spring and into the season to rise on the depth chart.
     Next I bring up Virgil Vasquez. Here was a guy who had potential. He’s somone my dad would call “not ready for prime time”. This was proven when his first or second ML start actually was on prime time to a national audience. To be fair, that was 2007. He didn’t earn a callup in 08, for good reason. Since anyone who could throw was called up at some point, that says something. Since the offseason began, Vasquez has been let go by the Tigers, Red Sox, and Padres. Currently he is in camp with Pittsburgh, but they’re already speculating that he won’t make the team out of camp.
     For the sake of expressing opinions, I’m bringing up Freddy Dolsi next (he was in the game I watched from last years archives). He exploded onto the scene with his early May callup. His spring 07 outing that I just finished watching wasn’t great though. The commentators were comparing him to Pedro Martinez (it was a Tigers-Mets game which Pedro pitched in). They said “Pedro is a pitcher, and right now Mr. Dolsi is a thrower.” With that said, Dolsi appreared in 42 games over a couple callups last year. He went 1-5 with a 3.97 ERA and went 2 for 3 in save opportunities. The record obviously isn’t good, but I didn’t think the loses were all his fault when they happened. A sub-4.0 ERA is very good for a rookie pitcher on last years team. Dolsi hadn’t been above A ball before the 08 season. Some might like to think that he has an inside track on making the ball club out of camp because of his experience. I, on the other hand, see what he did raw and think that begining the year at Toledo would make him better prepared for his next callup, which is why I didn’t pick him in my initial 25-man roster the other day.
     Now I come to a surprise on my radar, pitcher Orber Moreno. He pitched well in the game I saw, not great, but well. He’s seen big league action in 1999, 2003, and 2004 with the Royals and Mets. Not real sure what the story is on him. This was the first game out of five or so I’ve seen him appear in. I remember seeing his name on the camp lists last year, and that’s about where it ends. He looks like the kind of veteran arm I would have given an inside track to as far as looking for arms. He was last known to be in the Tigers organization, but at the moment isn’t with any club that I know of at all. MLB.com and MiLB.com link him with Detroit because no one else is available to lay claim. At the same time there is not connection to being on any club whatsoever, like I said. His last visable stats were from the 2008 Venezuelan Winter League. The bright side to this story is that Moreno is currently on the roster for Team Venezuela in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. I hope he catches on somewhere. 
     Last on today’s trip through memory lane is Nick Trzesniak. Who is Nick Trzesniak? I had the same reaction myself. I saw him in an early spring game (from last year) and dismissed him as a random player from Tigertown. But today I saw in another game (again, from last year) that was a few weeks later. The comentators had expressed that he might have been a viable option as backup catcher, since Vance Wilson wasn’t yet done for the year and Inge was still supposedly on the trade block. So I decided to investigate and answer for myself who Mr. Trzesniak was. Turns out that he is a relative nobody, no major league experience and is in camp this year with the Padres, I think. But he had a good spring statistically from the archives I saw, and now I’m a bit of a believer that he will get his cup of coffee in a big league clubhouse before he hangs up his cleats.

     Stay tuned when some of my next writings will be about my expectations for the 2009 team and an update to my stats-driven fantasy roster game.