Revenge of the Camp Notes

Today’s Camp Notes has to start with a retraction. In yesterday’s post, my starting lineup for Sunday’s camp games included Bryce Eldridge in the Double-A lineup. I, of course, was at the road matchup that day with the younger groups, but that was the lineup that the Giants had put out in the morning (as an aside, one change this year with the organization is that they are doing a much better job at disseminating information on camp roster and lineups — all the scouts are very happy with the change!).

However, I spoke yesterday with a couple of scouts who had gone to Papago that day to watch Eldridge, and they told me that he did not, in fact, participate. He’d been a late scratch. That comes one day after he’d taken just two at bats on Saturday in his first action in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to look at those dots and avoid the temptation to connect them in a troubling fashion. It seems most likely that Eldridge’s first attempt at returning to game action didn’t go well, the pain in his wrist returned, and the team backed off him. We’ll see whether he gets back into action later this week, or whether another little shutdown is coming.

Either way, at this point, it feels unlikely that he’ll be ready for the start of the year. That’s not the end of the world, of course — it’s a long year. But in a system with one clear outstanding prospect, you certainly don’t want to open a fresh new season with a health concern to that one big guy. Nothing sours the optimism of spring faster than injuries. Let’s pray for good health!

On a separate issue, a reader asked me why I hadn’t been mentioning Jhonny Level at all the past few days. It’s true that Level hasn’t participated in any game since I saw him in the Triple-A lineup on Friday. Yesterday he was listed as an extra guy on one of the rosters — which he hadn’t been on either Saturday or Sunday — though he didn’t get in. Still, I don’t think that Level’s absence is health related. I suspect that the guys ticketed for extended just aren’t getting a lot of rope in games right now because roster decisions are looming at the end of the week, and team officials need to see the real candidates for full season ball get as many reps as possible in order to make their decisions (other DSL kids like Oliver Tejada and Santiago Camacho haven’t been getting seeing much game action either, though Camacho is seeing plenty of bullkpen sessions).

And with that, let’s turn to the guys who were on the field, and look for some things to get excited about: