Aquilino Lopez is No More

Gillick made his next big move, trimming the bullpen by dealing Aquilino Lopez from the club. He sent him packing to the San Diego Padres for minor leaguers Matt Thayer and Trey Johnston. Neither of them is inspiring much out of me(short outlook below). Lopez pitched pretty well down the stretch for the Phils, with a 2.13 ERA and 16 Ks in 12.2 IP. However, he did give up a ton of baserunners, about 1.58 an inning. I hadn't noticed him giving up that many baserunners, but it seems that he gave up 6 baserunners in 2 innings in a blowout win against the Marlins, and also 4 baserunners during the win against the Reds where David Bell hit a 9th inning game winner. I still say that he could've been a valuable piece of the bullpen puzzle, and certainly couldn't do any worse than oldheads Rheal Cormier or Arthur Rhodes.


Trey Johnston is a 20 yr old 3B(18th rounder in 2003 by the Cubs) who hit 243/338/338 in 262 atbats in the minors thus far. This is now his 3rd team. He will probably go to low A Lakewood. He did have a good 20 games last year at the end of the year in low A compiling a 973 OPS, but looks like he missed some time due to injury.

Matt Thayer is a 24 yr old OF(31st rounder in 2004) who has hit 314/406/420 with gap power. In two years he's had 388 AB thus far. He's slated for high A Clearwater or probably should skip to AA Reading to challenge him if he's going to try to make it to the majors. Who knows what he can actually do, though. Looks like he has a little speed too, netting 18 steals over the past 2 years. Maybe he can turn into a bench player or some trade bait, he had a pretty good overall OPS(888) last year.