For a while this year, it seemed like the Pirates had a good thing going with their Chris Snyder/Ryan Doumit rotation. Both guys are notoriously fragile, but having them split time with each other seemed like a good way to keep a solid bat in the lineup behind the plate at all times and possibly keep both of them healthy. Now it’s June 9th, and both are on the disabled list. The Pirates announced today that Snyder is going to the 15-day DL with a strained lower back, something that’s given him trouble before, after injuring himself trying to stretch a double into a double (that’s not a typo; Snyder hit a ball off of the part of the left field grandstand that juts out and every Major Leaguer should’ve gotten a double out of, but manged to get thrown out by 10 feet at second base) last night.
The Bucs will call up Wyatt Toregas from Indianapolis, because Jason Jaramillo is on the disabled list there and Eric Fryer has only played ten games at the level. Toregas played a bit with the Indians in 2009 after a decent showing with Triple-A Colubus that season, but he struggled quite a bit across three levels last year and was hitting .034 for Indy (that’s 1-for-29) before his callup.
Fryer’s played quite well across Altoona and Indianapolis this year, hitting a combined .326/.413/.542 with seven homers and I said last night that if Snyder was disabled I wanted him to get the call. I understand why the club is a bit reticent to move him up so quickly (again, only 36 plate appearances above Double-A, coupled with the fact that he wasn’t Altoona’s everyday catcher with Tony Sanchez there, so he’s only got 24 games behind the plate this year), but the prospect of a Dusty Brown/Wyatt Toregas timeshare behind the plate until sometime in late June or early July is pretty dire.
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