Per Chris Jackson of the Albuquerque Examiner, Ramon Troncoso is on his way back from Albuquerque to join the big club. In 4.2 innings for ABQ so far, Troncoso has allowed three hits and a walk, striking out two. As Eric Stephen of TrueBlueLA has become fond of noting, that’s four days in a row that the Dodgers have recalled a player from AAA, following John Ely, Jamie Hoffmann, and Ivan DeJesus.
The difference here is that while the first three recalls were more or less expected, the move to get Troncoso wasn’t, especially with another move needing to be made on Friday when Jon Garland is activated. Beyond that, we don’t yet know who is being sent down to make room for Troncoso. When I noted the move on Twitter, several people guessed Blake Hawksworth, in light of how he took the loss last night, but he’s out of options so that seems unlikely. With Hector Gimenez and Dioner Navarro still on the DL, our usual best guess of A.J. Ellis is safe, so unless there’s another new injury we don’t know about, my best guess is that this is going to be Hoffmann, headed back to ABQ a few days ahead of schedule.
Hoffmann’s received just one at-bat since his recall, and the Dodgers have no shortage of outfielders; it was always assumed that he’d be the one sent back down when Garland was ready. Recalling Troncoso would bump the roster back up to twelve pitchers, where the Dodgers tend to prefer it, though I will admit that it does seem odd that they wouldn’t have just called up a pitcher over Hoffmann in the first place. I suppose we’ll learn more today.
Speaking of Albquerque and guys who aren’t long for it, Jerry Sands has started off his AAA season by homering in each of his four games, and none of them have been cheap. In his first 16 PA, he has 7 hits (including the 4 homers) and not a single strikeout. Watch his homer from last night below (h/t to Twitter follower “OdinsBeard“), and try to keep strong with me in waiting until at least the end of April before we launch a full-fledged “Free Jerry Sands!” campaign. You’ll notice the center field fence there says “428″, making this shot at least 440 feet.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctxUIyC5Ruo]