re young catchers since i was the one responsible for these divergent threads of approx posts going back to the braves could be better off if an injury happens i may as well inject a little more fuel to the flame back at the beginning of spring training i though lopez would make the squad easily olson was still recovering from his late season injury knee i believe and there were questions as to whether he would be able to play before june and then berryhill was dinged up i was looking forward to this because i believe that lopez can hit and field the position before last season he was the braves defensive catcher prospect while brian deak was the braves offensive catcher prospect besides olson and berryhill couldn t hit their way out of a wet cardboard box and don t walk enough to be useful but olson recovered quickly berryhill recovered and the braves went with the two vets i still say that if one of those two had been down at the start of the season he wouldn t have gotten his job back there is a certain logic to keeping olson and berryhill around after all ml catchers are in short supply and suffer from wear and tear there are teams out there without one average ml catcher california and seattle come to mind certainly trying to move olson or berryhill through waivers would be unlikely to work plus you d have to eat that salary which isn t huge but isn t tiddleywinks either i think olson s at about berryhill at but that s only what i recall yes i think arbitration eligibility may have a role to play in this also what is it that of the year players aren t eligible for arbitration only the that were on the roster the longest are eligible of course the system may change but the extent of that change is not yet known from a business standpoint it may make sense to keep lopez down until june the first time olson berryhill go on the dl i am still disappointed that lopez isn t on the team i still prefer to think of myself as a fan when it comes to the braves and the truth is that i d rather see our best team on the field which imo includes lopez of course today we play the cubs hopefully we won t need him as for the schuerholz cox conversation i imagine it went like this remember they ve both been gm s the following is not meant to be read by the humor impaired cox ok we ve sent jones down his fielding could be a little smoother besides blauser can hit ok and his fielding is better than it used to be schuerholz well we ll have to send nieves down too deion just won t sign that baseball only contract we can t count on him in october so we have to keep nixon around for the defense besides gorman s not ready to give up on billy hatcher yet once hatcher s gone and deion signs we can move nixon for frankie rodriguez that ought to give us some pitching depth in cox yep that ll be nice too bad deion won t sign ok i ll look for nieves when justice starts having berry berry er back problems again now what about klesko schuerholz well we ve still got to fork out another mil for bream if we keep klesko we either lose the money or cabrera i keep dangling sid in front of dal maxwell but somehow he doesn t seem to be the same gm first jeffries for jose and now whiten for clark if he gets rid of brian jordan then i d have to believe that he and whitey herzog switched bodies at the winter meetings cox ok keep trying on bream and i ll wait til the trading deadline for my hunter klesko platoon maybe i can get a few extra at bats for cabrera while we wait try california if snow starts slowly maybe whiteydal will bite on sid and if that doesn t work then perhaps sid s knees could be persuaded to act up there s always the day dl mwa ha ha ha ha schuerholz what about caraballo cox well he s not that much better than lemke maybe if he starts in richmond he ll start walking more besides if he s going to be arbitration eligible better to stretch him out so that we actually get some value from him before he makes the big bucks schuerholz now let s see that leaves lopez cox nooooo i gotta keep lopez sure i didn t think olson would recover this quickly maybe i can talk caminiti into running into him again schuerholz nope lopez has gotta go you know that he ll get million in arbitration may as well put it off that one extra year besides until olson s shown his stuff a little bit i can t trade him besides berryhill s a left handed hitter you know how rare that is cox don t you mean a left handed whiffer pretty common if you ask me i mean he made pat borders look good in the world series pat borders schuerholz hey you re the one who wouldn t write lopez into the lineup cox well you re the one who went out and got me jeff reardon besides i thought lopez wouldn t be used to our pitching staff s stuff he got some time with them this spring looked pretty good come on surely we only need to keep one stiff behind the plate schuerholz yeah but which stiff whichever one we keep will be hurt by may cox ok ok you made your point keep them both surely one of them will be on the dl by june at the latest then i can call up lopez and then we can win games the pennant the world series i ll be up there with john mcgraw casey stengel earl weaver oh they laughed at me in toronto but have you ever had to deal with george bell i ll finally get my just reward mwa ha ha ha schuerholz easy bobby have you been taking those happy pills left around by chuck tanner why d you ever hire that guy anyhow cox don t ask me ask ted eric roush fierkelab bchm biochem duke edu i am a marxist of the groucho sort grafitti paris tanstaafl although the internet comes close
