Meet Cody Ransom

The Milwaukee Brewers had a busy day in the front office on Wednesday. Apart from placing Alex Gonzalez on the 60-day DL and optioning utility infielder Edwin Maysonet to Nashville, GM Doug Melvin and company claimed Cody Ransom from Arizona on the waiver wires.

Either the market is extremely shallow, or the Brewers really see something in him. I’m not sold.

Here are the facts: Cody Ransom is 36 years old. He has played 10 years in the Majors for five teams besides Milwaukee. In those 10 years, he has played a total of 248 games. Though he has had good stints with the Giants, Yankees, and especially with Arizona this year, he has been far from consistent, averaging just .226 during his entire career.

It seems that the early plan for Ransom is to have him platoon with Izturis at shortstop, bringing the age at the position up to a combined 68. If he can continue to produce – he was hitting at a .269 clip with four homers as a D-Back – it will be a welcome spark to our offense. One thing did worry me, however, when the media asked manager Ron Roenicke about putting the veteran infielder at short:

I haven’t seen him play shortstop for a while, so I don’t know how he is there, but he used to be a very good defender, and we’ll see.– Ron Roenicke

Seriously? This brought up a larger question for me – is this how a contending team should be going about acquiring new talent? If the words “he used to be good” have to cross your lips during a press conference, the next words had better be “and that’s why we had to pass him over for literally anybody else.” I don’t doubt that the Brewers front office is qualified to make personnel decisions, and there must be something that the team likes about Ransom but the whole affair doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Except for the fact that our farm system has serious lack of infielders ready to go – besides Scooter Gennett, but he’s still a year away I think.

The truth is, when injuries pile up sometimes this is the best you can do. Ransom played well for Arizona, and the Brewers are hoping that the trend can continue and an offensive gap can be shored up for the time being. Whatever the reason, Ransom needs to be our guy when his named is slotted on the lineup card. He needs to hit well and he needs to be more than a guy who used to be a good defender. I have faith in the Brewers’ ability to pick up players – please don’t test it Cody.