Fabio Castro Should Be A Phillie in 2007

Short and sweet on here…Fabio Castro, the glorious dictator of the Phillies bullpen, should be a Phillie in 2007. This does not mean he should only be in the organization, he should be on the 25 man major league roster. The numbers since the Phillies got him speak for themselves:

• 0-0 17.1 IP 0.00 ERA 0.40 WHIP
• 5 hits, 2 walks, 8 Ks, 0 ER

Yeah, uh, wow. Is there any legitimate reason that the guy shouldn’t be in the majors next year? Is there any reason he shouldn’t have his role expanded RIGHT NOW? Apparently Mike Arbuckle thinks that he still ‘needs seasoning’. So he’s 21 years old and has a small frame…so that makes him what? Cole Hamels? There is no real reason the guy should not be our setup man RIGHT NOW, with a guy like Geary as the closer, unless we simply don’t believe that production matters in actually evaluating a player’s worth.

What I find interesting is that Philling Station had Castro in their sights way back in December, when the Rule V draft was going on and there were rumblings about him being taken (eventually the Royals picked him):

 Anyway, Squire reports that the top pick will most likely be 21-year-old Fabio Castro, a left-handed reliever in the White Sox organization. Castro is just 5-8, 157 lbs. and hasn’t yet risen above A-ball, but Jonathon Mayo of MLB.com writes of him:

Coming out of the bullpen for Winston-Salem in the Class A Carolina League, Castro posted a 2.28 ERA in 79 innings, yielding just 58 hits (for a .209 batting average against) and striking out 75. He finished the season with 11 straight appearances without allowing an earned run. For his career, including his first summer in the Dominican Summer League, Castro is 26-12 with 19 saves and a 2.28 ERA. He’s rung up 292 strikeouts in 261 innings.

Castro could fit right into a team’s bullpen, but he could have the stuff — if not the stamina — to slide into the back end of a rotation.

So it’s not like the guy has come out of nowhere…he’s been highly touted before.  Am I the only one feeling a K-Rod in 2002 type vibe from this guy? Why not ride the train to its logical conclusion?

Don’t Listen To Them, The Roots Feels Oh So Right

The Roots has been repping Philadelphia for years now, and their newest album is no different. Phillyskyline had a review of Game Theory on its site (scroll down to July 27th) and had this to say:

But this record is pure Roots, a pure album. It’s got that continuity, that flow-to-the-next song that made Things Fall Apart so fluid. Game Theory, it seems, is the next movement. The album is at once a bell curve and a circle; it’s a bell curve that intros softly upward with a keyboard soundcheck, before unleashing fury that peaks mid-album with “Here I Come,” the Black Thought / Malik B / Dice Raw trifecta with a Myxomatosis-fuzzbox power bassline. There’s a more obvious Radiohead reference, though, after the album comes back down and eases toward its end, in the next-to-last track “Atonement.” A female chorus of “as I wait for atonement, trapped in the heat of the moment” is sung over a background of Thom Yorke’s “you and whose army . . . you and your cronies . . . ahh-ah-ah-ah-ahh.” (Black Thought’s “OK Computer / Radiohead’s knock to the future” from Things Fall Apart’s “You Don’t See Us” was the first nod to The Greatest Band On The Planet.) The bell meets its circle at the end of the last track, a tribute to the late J-Dilla, fading to black before track one — Dillatastic Von Won(derful) — fades back up like some Alan Parsons studio trickery.

So I’d gather that Phillyskyline’s a fan. And so are we, especially this: LINK TO THE VIDEO(courtesy Philadelphia Will Do). Great video, just great. It looks like this is a winner.
Game Theory comes out August 29th…be there. Buy it. Obviously they appeal to the backpack rap crowd, but so what? They’re just good.