By Ron Thompson
Nolan Reimold was called up by the Baltimore Orioles today.
It’s about time.
All Reimold was doing was hitting .394/.485/.743 with nine home runs at Triple-A, following a 2008 season in which he hit .284 with 25 home runs and 84 RBI in 507 at-bats at Double-A. He had hit .306 with 11 HR in 186 at-bats in 2007 at Double-A, but the Orioles’ brain trust decided to send him back to that level in 2008, and kept him there all year.
Meanwhile, the Orioles were giving left field at-bats to Felix Pie, 16 months younger than Reimold, and such a proven failure at the major league level that the Chicago Cubs traded him last winter for Garrett Olson and Henry Williamson. Olson was then shipped to Seattle along with Ronny Cedeno for Aaron Heilman, who posted a 5.21 ERA and 1.50 WHIP in 2008 pitching for the Mets, and is putting up comparable numbers for the Cubs this year.
In 63 at-bats this year, Pie is hitting .206 with two home runs and three RBIs. His major league career totals are .220/.287/.328 with five homers and 12 doubles in 323 at-bats.
But of course nothing is ever simple on a club run by Andy MacPhail. If you’ve got a corner outfielder with no power hitting .206 and a potential replacement at Triple-A hitting .394 with nine home runs, WWAD? Why, give the left field job to Lou Montanez, of course. Montanez is 27, and like Pie, was a highly touted prospect in the Cubs organization when MacPhail was the team’s president. In fact, he was the No. 3 overall pick in the 2000 amateur draft. That’s a pretty good indication of how smoothly the Cubs were functioning in MacPhail’s sixth season as CEO, that a) they had the No. 3 pick, because they had the second-worst record in the National League in 1999, and b) they used it to draft Montanez, and not, say, Chase Utley, who went 16th that year.
Hey, if your grandfather and father were both Hall of Fame executives, the only father and son team in the Hall of Fame, maybe you’d the chance to screw up two major league franchises, too.
But Adam Jones tweaked a hamstring Wednesday night, and that was the final straw. So Neimold gets The Call. Not even Andy MacPhailure can keep a good man down forever.
