re pleasant yankee surprises in article netnews upenn edu sepinwal mail sas upenn edu alan sepinwall writes some pleasant and then some not so pleasant surprises about the edition of the bronx bombers so far first the pleasant spike owen all through spring training this guy was looking like the second coming of mike gallego but with even worse hitting now the guy is third in the major leagues in ba and he s ranked pretty high in total hits and runs scored i know it s still early in the season but he and pat kelly more on him in a minute have provided a lot of spark at the bottom of the order that s given the big guys mattingly tartabull o neill plenty of rbi opportunities let s hope he keeps this up pat kelly the guy is finally showing some of the ability that led stick michael to label him a star for the s i wouldn t go that far but kelly looks infinitely improved at bat i guess the tips he took from boggs in spring training really paid off huh and here i thought boggs would never do anything to help anybody besides himself and his glove like always has been terrific he and mattingly comprise the best defensive right side of the infield in all of baseball imho paul o neill we had to get rid of roberto kelly partly because he was under too much pressure in ny to be the next barry bonds he won t do that in cincy either and partly because he had this real unprofessional tendency to give up in the second half of the year i just felt that we could ve gotten more for him than o neill well so far o neill is turning out just fine he looks like he should be able to duplicate if not surpass mel hall s numbers from last year and he keeps opposing pitchers from pitching around tartabull now if only buck would play him against lefties some more to see what he can do wickman a friend made a comparison between wickman and jack morris they never have impressive stats but they always find some way to win although morris seems to be losing that ability i figured that wickman would be the least important part of the steve sax trade best trade since we got that ruth guy maybe winding up as a good middle reliever but i like what i ve seen so far he doesn t pitch pretty but he gets the job done key what s going on here key was just supposed to provide the rotation with some stability you know shore up the left side provide experience get maybe wins and here this guy is dominating everybody he faces who needs maddux or cone i ll take key any day and now the not so pleasant surprises spike owen sure he s hitting like crazy but the guy cannot field to save his life and they said he was brought in to provide defense velarde stankiewicz and even silvestri are better defensively than owen remember it s still early look for his offense to tail off and his defense to improve hopefully he has that rep because i heard that either last year or over the last years or something like that he has the third highest fielding percentage among major league shortstops behind c r and tony i m not gonna help this sorry mets team at all fernandez i do agree though that he has not looked all that impressive in the field thus far tartabull the book on tartabull was keep him healthy and he ll produce well he hasn t done too much so far sure he s hit a few homers but those were all solo shots and he hasn t gotten any of the big rbis that your cleanup man is supposed to give you then again he had a slow start last year once he got off the dl that is and turned into a one man wrecking crew late in the year so we ll see the bullpen ugh what happened we were supposed to have one of the most solid pens in the majors meanwhile the pen has already blown three saves maybe more i haven t checked the great howe farr lefty righty tandem farr s era is in the s or s and howe s is infinite i didn t think such a thing was possible but it is hopefully they ll get their acts together or else buck s gonna burn out the starters for fear that the bullpen ll blow a lead in the immortal words of the scooter holy cow seaver that johnny key guy can pitch can t he see you in the series alan
