Rule 5 – Everth Cabrera – what might have been?
With the Rule 5 draft quickly approaching a quirky thought occurred to me. If you could somehow rewrite the history books would you have protected Everth Cabrera to be the Rockies regular second baseman? For those who don’t recall, Everth Cabrera was claimed in the Rule 5 draft by the Padres from the Rockies system and quickly became the Padres everyday shortstop a couple years back.
Cabrera is basically a slick fielding EY2 type player as a switch hitter and very effective base stealer, however he can also play defensively at shortstop. He is still only 25 years old with somewhat limited up and down major league success. The point is if Cabrera had stayed in the Rockies minor league sytem, he would almost certainly be challenging the other in house alternatives that the Rockies currently have for second base.
Even if Cabrera’s floor expectation might be Herrara with much better speed, wouldn’t he still have more upside at 2nd than either EY2 or Nelson?
With the typical $4.0m-$5.5m per year average free agent second basemen (Hill, Ellis, Carroll and Barmes) seem to be outside the relm of possibility for the Rockies – this is just a thought?
Cabrera might be nice, but not a real game changer. With of the needs that the Rockies have, I wonder if this is the year that we take someone in the Rule 5 draft.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
That should have been “With all of the needs …”