Fill That Roster

The Dodgers have added more roster filler for the 2007 season by offering Choo Freeman a minor league contract. Freeman was a highly regarded prospect as late as 2000, ranked just behind Barry Zito and ahead Eric Gagne, Ben Sheets, C.C. Sabathia, Adam Dunn and Aubrey Huff. Since then, he's done a whole lot of nothing. For some reason, my colleagues at Purple Row really still like the guy, but I can't see why. In his best minor league season, he put up a .297/.350/.478 line in a very hitter friendly park at Colorado Springs. Other than that, he's put up numbers in the minors that wouldn't be anything special for a major league center fielder.

Assuming Matt Kemp can no longer play center field, Freeman will beat out perpetual Dodger farmhand Wilkin Ruan for the third string center fielder job, but no more. Since either Juan Pierre or Jason Repko is likely to get hurt sometime this year, that means Freeman will get to take some most likely lousy at bats this year.

As highly regarded as the Dodgers farm system is, it still has some holes in center field and at catcher, and this is an acceptable temporary solution.