In Jorge De Leon's Year-in-Review post, we didn't have much nice to say about his hitting. Or his fielding. So that's been taken care of by converting him to a reliever.
Tri-City manager Jim Pankovits:
...Everybody will remember Jorge DeLeon who played shortstop for us last year but now he’s one of our relief pitchers and they’ve had him 96, 97 (mph) on the gun in Florida, so we’re excited to see what he can do on the mound this year. Things didn’t work out for him at shortstop and he was eager and anxious to get on the mound and show us what he can do."
Otherwise, Pankovits expects the 2010 ValleyCats to bring some pop:
“From early indications, it looks like that’s what this club will be built more on, is power bats, more than the speed and higher average,” Pankovits said when asked about the team’s power base. We hit quite a few out of the ballpark in BP,” Pankovits said. “The wind was blowing out a little bit but we’ve got some pretty good thunder in the sticks it looks like.”
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
