DBacks Tracy back, but in what role

May 27, 2008   ·   Paul Raymond   ·   Jump to comments

Chad Tracy made his return to the Arizona Diamondbacks in last night’s game. Tracy got the start at first, so the team could give starting first baseman Conor Jackson a day off. Tracy will not be playing their regularly as Conor is having a pretty good season, so where else could he play? Tracy also has experience at third base, but that position is pretty much locked up with Mark Reynolds. So what role is manager Bob Melvin looking at for Tracy?

The initial problem is Tracy, is not fully recovered from microfracture surgery on his knee yet. He had the surgery back in September and doesn’t even expect to be fully healthy for another year. “I’m happy to play. I’m here to play. I’m sure there are going to obstacles during the game that are going to come up that I haven’t really faced, but I think I’m ready for it.” It doesn’t sound like someones to sure of his abilities yet to perform on the field. Even so, the Diamondbacks must believe Tracy is in good enough physical shape to contribute to the ball club now. It will be interesting to see how things go when he finally takes some tricky plays at either corner.

Third base seems like the most likely position for Tracy, if he were to start a game. Current third baseman Mark Reynolds has been in a pretty big slump for the better part of a month now. Melvin has already insisted thou that Reynolds is “our third baseman”. That is good news for Reynolds. Reynolds needs to start playing up to his capabilities thou, cause if he doesn’t you could expect Tracy to get some more appearances at the hot corner.

The role Tracy will most likely hold thou for the next weeks, the dreaded pinch-hitter. The role most former starting positional players can’t stand to take. Melvin looks at Tracy as “thunder off the bench”, much like Tony Clark was for the team a couple years ago.

At the moment thou, it’s anyones guess how much Tracy actually plays. Like I said earlier, he’s not even fully recovered from his injury yet, so there will be days where he just can’t physically go. “We’ll see how it goes,” Melvin said. “We’ll see physically where we are from day to day. That’s why I don’t want to go out and say he’ll get ‘x’ amount of at-bats.” One thing that is not in question thou, is if Tracy is healthy and performing, this Diamondbacks team becomes a lot better. With a legitimate power threat on the bench, the D’Backs would have two solid pinch-hitters teams would have to worry about, the other being Micah Owings. This team could definitely be poised for a very deep playoff run, remember I do have them picked as this years World Series Champions.

Here’s a link to the AZCentral.com, and some other Diamondback notes.

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