Saturday

Rory says the more rookies we play, the more we win, so play them more. Along the same lines, we were told for a couple years we weren't bringing anyone up until we could bring all these guys up together. Now that they're up together, not keeping them together on the field would appear, at least to me, to defeat the purpose. The more Eldred, Doumit, and Duffy play, the more there seems to be to like. I'd say we might as well afford McLouth the same opportunity.

Today's notebook reports that Ollie will be headed to Indy to make some rehab starts. With the way Duke, Eldred, Doumit, and Duffy are playing, having Ollie make a couple good starts for us at the end of the year would be a great way to go into next year. The notebook also discusses limits for Duke and hints that when Perez goes back they may just stick to a six man rotation for the rest of the year.

Meanwhile, Paul Meyer's fawning over our young talent continues with a piece on Neil Walker. Words like "one of a kind" and "best of his age group" and of course "special" or similar things pepper the whole article. I won't argue that Walker has put up some great numbers for a 19-year-old in full-season ball this year (.296 average, .776 OPS, 12 homers, 32 doubles, 67 RBIs in 116 games at Hickory according to Baseball America), but you'd swear that him and Duke were Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra with the way Meyer talks about them. I suppose if Walker does get sent to Arizona this fall we'll get an idea of just how good he is. The notebook also mentions that both Walker and McCutchen might see some (very) late season promotions, to Lynchburg and Williamsport, respectively. They made similar moves last year, so something like that wouldn't be shocking.