Let’s See Lonnie!

I love the name Lonnie. If that turns out to be the only thing in this post to be reasonable, so be it. As Ed said yesterday, Jared Goedert is more than likely not on his way to the Jake any time soon. So, I say, let’s see Lonnie Chisenhall. It is obvious at this point that he is the guy they want at third in the future, and he will probably beat Goedert for the job in spring training, so let the fans get a glimpse of what he can do at this level. Maybe he’ll be great. Maybe he’ll suck. Whatever. Not a chance he could be any worse than what we have now, and if anything at least he will get his feet wet so he knows what to expect next year. So, I ask, whenever one of the third baseman impersonators — thats you, Marte, Nix, and Valbuena — does anything wrong at the plate or on the field, if you’re at the game start chanting “let’s see Lonnie!” at Manny Acta and anyone else important who is listening. All 300 attendees’ voices need to be heard!

Speaking of third base, I have watched a lot of baseball in my almost 22 years on this planet and I can honestly say that I have never seen such a glaring hole at any position (other than a team’s bullpen) on any team ever. It is a little easier to deal with poor fielding when a guy is hitting .300 with some sort of power. Or if the poor soul can barely hit a beach ball with a tennis racket but he can catch a cold in the desert, fine, at least he’s saving some runs. These gentleman take the cake. Maybe the coaches should make them practice with oven mitts, like Lance “The Dance” Romance. Maybe someone should piss on their contracts when they refuse to do extra calisthenics. Maybe things that happen in movies don’t actually work. I don’t know, but I’m willing to try anything at this point.

I must say, I disagree with Ed about Michael Brantley. If he is going to bat leadoff for you in the future, bat him leadoff now. With this entire season so far down the toilet, they should be running out what they project as their most likely future line-up, and actually stick with it. However, Manny Acta would rather take the Eric Wedge approach and jerk around the line-up every night. Since I know what is best for the team (just ask me), this is what my everyday line-up would be for the rest of the season, starting September 1st:

CF Michael Brantley
SS Asdrubal Cabrera
RF Shin-Soo Choo
1B Matt LaPorta
DH Travis Hafner
LF Trevor Crowe
3B Lonnie Chisenhall
2B Jason Donald
C Lou Marson

Before you crucify me, please hear my reasoning for LaPorta batting clean-up (then, crucify away!). Ideally, he is going to be batting in the middle of the order if this team is to be successful any time soon. We can’t hit any worse this year, so move him up where he has some protection instead of batting some screw-up (like Valbuena, for example) behind him. With Valbuena batting after him, who is going to give him a fastball to hit? Only an idiot, and since we aren’t playing any intersquad games I don’t like those odds. Conversely, Hafner has been mashing (.395 in his past 15 games, going into Wednesday’s game), so a pitcher won’t want to put anyone on with him coming up. Logic never really hurt anyone, but apparently Acta would rather not take that chance. Other than that, I think it is a reasonable order, and you could put Marte in for Chisenhall and I wouldn’t complain too much. At least he is a natural third baseman.

So for those reading, if you don’t agree with my potential line-up, I ask you to submit what you think is ideal for this team for the last month of the season. I’d love to hear your opinions on this and maybe you can open my eyes a little bit.