One week in thoughts

One week of baseball, 6 games in and we are 2-4. Not exactly what we hoped for but not the end of the world. What can we take out of that week?

The biggest thing I noticed was the defense was worse than I thought it would be, not that I thought it would be great but, we've had so many balls become hits that really should have been turned into outs.

• Jose Reyes has less range than I thought he would. I knew his UZR/150 wasn't good last year (-3.3/150) or the last few years, for that matter, but I didn't think he would look this bad. Maybe it's because we've been spoiled, the last few years, with Yunel Escobar and Marco Scutaro playing the position.
• I can't wait for Brett Lawrie to come back, especially for his defense. Mark DeRosa seems to be your basic 'one step and a dive' third baseman and he doesn't seem to be able to dive that far. Izturis, I'm sure, is better at third than we have seen so far, but his arm looks like it is taxed to the maximum trying to make that throw across the diamond. When Brett is back the defense should look so much better.
• That 3 error game from Emilio Bonifacio was terrible, but other than that, he seems to have pretty good range. The arm isn't good, but then that's generally what makes a player a second baseman. If a guy has range and a good arm he's a shortstop, good range and lesser arm he's a second baseman. Before this season Emilio had only played 75 games at second, so he's still learning. I wish we had Brian Butterfield around to work with him, but I'm sure they will be doing their best.
• Melky Cabrera looks far more awkward in the outfield than I thought he would. I don't know that it has cost us anything. He has a career UZR of -2.2/150 which makes him just a little worse than average. After watching him for a week, I'm thinking average is the best we can hope.

Other stuff:

• We saw two extremes of R.A. Dickey. In his first start, the knuckleball was dancing all over the place, mostly out of the strike zone and away from J.P. Arencibia's glove. Yesterday, it wasn't moving much at all, and a knuckleball that doesn't move much is like hitting off a tee.
• Quite the week for Arencibia. 3 home runs, 3 doubles, 2 singles, an .870 slugging average. The bad side: 1 walk, 9 strikeouts and 3 passed balls.
• I still hate the 8-man bullpen. And I hate the short fuse we continue to have with that 8th man. Jeremy Jeffress start the year in the spot, has one bad game and David Bush is in. Bush has a bad game and Edgar Gonzalez gets the job. Want to take bets on how long Edgar lasts?
• Who figured Brett Cecil for a 19.6 SO/9 innings rate?

What are you taking away from the first week of the season?

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