Ronny Paulino wasn't really doing much to impress the Phillies so they traded him to the Giants for a guy who wasn't really impressing anybody in San Fran. The Phillies received lefty reliever Jack Taschner in exchange for Paulino.
Taschner was walking too many batters this spring and saw the writing on the wall earlier this week, "Obviously, with the situation at hand, where they're so worried about the pitching here, that's put them in a situation where they don't feel comfortable with me, which is fine. I'm really not that upset about it."
And so he'll go from a rather poor team in the Bay area to the WFC in baseball hungry Philadelphia. I'm guessing he's not that upset about that either.
Todd Zolecki points out that adding a second lefty to the pen while J.C. Romero is out could have an impact on the fifth starter position, an angle we hadn't thought of, "It could pave the way for left-hander J.A. Happ winning the fifth-starter job. There had been some thought that if right-hander Chan Ho Park won the job that Happ could become the bullpen's second left-hander, but the arrival of Taschner seems to make that very unlikely."
Scott Lauber has Ruben Amaro's quotes on the newly acquired lefty, "We've been looking for some left-handed depth, and we're hopeful that [Taschner] can provide that for us. We'll see how it works out, but we figured he'd be a good risk to put in the mix to help us."
And that is what this trade seems like to us. Give up an under-performing catcher to take a risk on an under-performing reliever who happens to fill a need.
If nothing else, this could make the Chris Coste fan club happy for the near future.
Original Story:
http://www.the700level.com/2009/03/ph...
