Busy weekend for me, and I'm going to have to make this entry short.
Last week saw our confirmation of the free agency of eligible minor leaguers. The list I posted last week all declared, with five exceptions:
- Dustin Molleken (2010/22 offseason signee)
- Josh Sullivan
- Leuris Gomez
- Carlos Martinez
- Kyle Hancock
Those last four are all Rockies 2005 signees whose original contacts have expired. Sullivan has been confirmed to have re-signed with the Rockies for 2012, and it is likely the others did as well but I can't vouch for there not being some sort of exception in their contracts that is simply not the kind of thing that is ever reported.
All of these players but Gomez have seen their recent careers negatively impacted by injury, while Gomez himself, 25, has only played two years of pro baseball despite signing so long ago. Molleken and Sullivan are the oldest of the bunch at 27, while middle infielder Martinez is still only 23. 24 year old Hancock has had a very strange career so far, having only pitched in 19 professional games since being drafted seven years ago. I am assuming that the Rockies want to give Molleken and Sullivan a chance to be completely healthy before letting them go, while Gomez, Martinez and Hancock are all too far behind in their careers to judge one way or the other yet.
One other note: Baseball America put up a MiLB Free Agent tracker over the weekend, and this tracker happens to list Joe Torres, minor league free agent who spent last year with the Rockies organization, as having re-signed with the team. Unfortunately, I can't confirm anywhere else if this actually happened, and BA's own Matt Eddy hasn't mentioned anything of the move in his blog series. Torres is a former first round pick of the Angels who is hanging on to professional baseball despite not having made it past AA in ten professional seasons (his brief action with the Sky Sox in 2011 was his first glimpse). Despite his age of 29, Torres was one of the best relievers in the system last year, experiencing great success as the Drillers' primary setup man. He was one of a select few departing MiLB free agents I wanted to see return, so I hope this ends up to be correct.
That's it for now. We're a week and a half away from the Reserves Deadline.