FanPost

Is Rosales the new Scutaro?


I see many comments on whether Rosales should be playing more. It reminds me of when we used to discuss whether Marco Scutaro should play more. Let's go to some numbers, although the sample size for Rosales is small:

Before coming to Oakland, Scutaro had 129 plate appearances in 2 years for the Mets. In his next 3 years with the A's he averaged 441 plate appearances for the A's. During those 3 years he averaged about .258 and his OPS was over .700. People talked about his range not being that good, but he had some pop and some clutch hits and it appeared he was a very good sub for Crosby or Ellis. The day he homered with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th to beat Rivera on tax day 2007 still makes me really happy. We argued about whether Scutaro could do as well if he was allowed to play every day. Then it was time to clean house and Scutaro was sent to Toronto. He amassed more plate appearances for the Jays than he ever did with the A's, and now he is a starter with the Red Sox and he is hitting .284. At least some management in baseball thinks Scutaro can play every day and still be productive. Beane and his underlings found this guy, and I make the case he was about the best utility man in baseball until he became a usable starter in his 30s.

Does the above paragraph contain any wisdom and does it have anything at all to do with Rosales? I feel like it does.

Before coming to Oakland, Rosales had 296 plate appearances in 2 years for the Reds. So far he has 5 bombs for the power lacking A's. His average so far this season is .281. He hustles out there and if fun to watch. No player is exactly like another but this guy is like Scutaro in a lot of ways. He backs up a weak ss and a good 2b who gets injured. I don't see his D as being a reason to not get him into the lineup. We could trade for a better short stop and we could do a lot of different things, but I'm not sure the A's are headed deep into postseason this year no matter what they do. A year over .500 looks possible though and there are so many good young players in the organization I wonder about the idea of making trades to get a better ss. I vote ride it out with Pennington and get Rosales ABs wherever you can. Rosales, like Scutaro, is a great utility guy, and a great utility guy is worthy of getting into the lineup whenever possible until he shows he doesn't belong in the lineup. Given what the A's have now, I don't see a reason not to have Rosales in the lineup whenever possible.