Interesting...

As my dad will tell you, I'm a huge fan of Calvin Pickering's potential. However, even the most optimistic of sabermatically-inclined fans would have to admit that the big man looked bad this year.

In Big Cal's defense, his wife was hospitalized for a week having a baby, and Tony Pena refused to give him any chance to find a groove, strictly platooning Pickering against every-other right-handed pitcher who's name contained a 'w' (at least, I think that's what he was trying to do).

The surprise isn't that Pickering was sent to Omaha, but that All-Star Ken Harvey wasn't brought up. For this reason, I'm going to refrain from berating the Royals for panicking three weeks into the season and instead support the effort to continue pursuing potential.

As Rob & Rany noted on April 19th, Matt Diaz has been tearing up the minors, and is still relatively young (for a Royals prospect, anyway). Yes, Harvey has looked good in the minors, but we KNOW what he can do in the big leagues. Diaz is still an unknown quantity and while the options are still there for Harvey and Pick, why not see what Diaz can do?

Lord knows, the team could use some more power.