Hansen impressed the Angels


Here's another installment of Peter Gammons' weekly chat on the Mike Felger Show on 890 ESPN. Among the many subjects broached were Big Papi's hitting slump, Manny Ramirez gaining speed while working out in Arizona this winter, and what the Sox could potentially be looking for as the trade market develops this season.

Enjoy.

On Manny’s baserunning
PG: The thing I really take out of it more than anything is the work he did out at the Athletes Performance Institute out in Tempe [Arizona]. I said to people at spring training that his running gait is so completely different, and that’s one of the things that they do. I remember Carl Crawford telling me – and he’s one of the fastest players in Major League Baseball – he told me that when he went to API that they actually taught him to how to run and he thought he had vastly increased his speed going there.

Not only is he in the best shape of his life, but his gait is just completely different. I don’t think there’s any way he scores from second [as he did on Jason Varitek’s hit against the Blue Jays in the bottom of the ninth last week] on that play last year.

On the AL East
PG: It’s disappointing to see the start that [Toronto] has gotten off to. I was talking to some Yankees people today and they were saying that the Red Sox are probably the only team that can say they are going to win more than 90 games in that division -- and have that ceiling. Though the Yankees in some ways, despite how horrible the situation has been with both Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes and as questionable as things are for Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte, you know they still look at Tampa Bay and Toronto and feel like they can beat those teams. It’s certainly possible and we’ll have to see.

A lot of us thought Tampa Bay was going to be really improved and they are. They’ve got Scott Kazmir coming back against the Red Sox on Sunday and James Shields as we saw [last] Sunday is one of the better right-handed pitchers in the league. I was watching the game with Jim Leyland on Sunday and he said that [Shields] has got to be one of the American League All-Stars and they wanted to pick him the year before.

I think Tampa Bay’s improvement of their young players and with Evan Longoria coming up it was certainly expected. The Yankees have broken down more than we thought, and we underestimated how much the Yankees rushed Hughes and Kennedy. Hughes was hurt a lot of last year, really lost 2/3 of a development year and Kennedy jumped right from the Florida State League to the American League East and that’s a huge jump.

I think as much as we all believe they’ll be good pitchers, we underestimated how tough it would be for these pitchers to jump right into this division. I’m not going to run the flag up in Baltimore and I don’t believe that team is going to stay up there. I do think that the one encouraging thing the Red Sox have had is that their pitching has stayed healthy, looks like it’s going to be pretty good and it’s going to be better and better.

If and when the Sox make a trade, will it be for a starter or for a bullpen guy?
PG: I think it will be another bullpen guy because they really believe that Colon can make 5-7 starts in June or whenever it is, and that he can reasonably give Buchholz and Lester a little rest so they’re not over 200 innings come September. They would like another middle guy. All weekend I listened to Angels players raving about how good Craig Hansen was, but I still think they need another guy in there.

I’m still a believer that Manny Delcarmen is going to get it, and that lack of confidence that he sometimes exudes can be overcome. His stuff is so great. You couldn’t go on the market and get someone with anywhere close to his stuff, or anyone close to Hansen’s stuff. It’s a matter of bringing it out of them, but they’d still like another pitcher and preferably a left-hander...but there are none.

Is Masterson a guy they might be able to bring into the equation as well?
PG: Maybe down the line. I don’t worry too much that he got whacked around [in his last start in Double-A], but he’s still got a long way to go on his slider and change up. I know that they look at him with the potential of a guy that could end up like a Brandon Webb, a sinkerball pitcher that can get you a lot of innings.

If you’re looking at a pitcher that could get you into the eighth inning at 80 pitches, then it’s hard to move him into the bullpen too soon. That’s one of the concerns. The left-handed pitcher Dustin Richardson is another guy maybe at Double-A and throwing good. [Richardson] is the guy that actually won the Bobby Knight School contest and was the 15th guy at Texas Tech. He could end up helping them, and I know if they could find somebody to help them then they would.

The amount of pitching out there, I still go out and look at the veteran guys that were available and throwing 91 or 92 two years ago and are now throwing 87 or 88. They may still be available, but do you want them. In this era of the ninth year of exhaustive minor league drug testing and the third year of Major League drug testing, it’s become a young man’s game and you better have young player that can come in and play. You better not be like the Detroit Tigers and relying on players in their 30’s.

Projecting David Ortiz’s final numbers for the 2008 season
PG: .290, 35 and – wow, he still has tremendous people in front of him, and 110 RBIs. It still worries me a little bit that he doesn’t hit the ball the other way, but maybe it’s the pitching. I watch batting practice and I see him hit the ball eight miles to left field and you see J.D. Drew hit the ball eight miles to left field. Drew has not hit a ball to left field in that park. You kind of look around and say what’s going on?

But you know they’re in first place and they’re playing some extraordinary baseball. If there are a couple of injuries on that pitching staff and you don’t see Ortiz and Drew hitting the ball to left field, then they are prone to slumps as you saw against some pretty good pitching in Tampa.

What do you make of all the Sox wins in close games this season?
PG: Their pitching has been really good and their bullpen has been good. Usually when you have a streak like that it doesn’t carry over for an entire season.

It’s usually an aberrational thing like hitting with runners in scoring position. Because they’ve gotten pretty good pitching and survived the month of travel, terrible scheduling the sickness, Ortiz and some others not hitting like they can…I look at it like they have the pitching and defense to survive and the flexibility.

The depth that they have to be able to have a backup outfielder like Coco Crisp -- if he is a backup outfielder -- and Jed Lowrie come up and contribute as much as he has. That and the fact that every April as they’re putting their team together Tim Wakefield is able to put this team on his back a little bit. Every April, Tim Wakefield is terrific and he’s done it again.