{"id":10340,"date":"2015-03-18T09:29:02","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T13:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10340"},"modified":"2015-03-18T09:29:02","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T13:29:02","slug":"kobernus-release-odd-timing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=10340","title":{"rendered":"Kobernus release; odd timing?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kobernus<\/a>

Kobernus cut loose by the team yesterday. Photo from 2012 via pennlive.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Word came out tonight that Jeff Kobernus<\/strong>, long time farm hand and former 2nd round pick out of UC Berkeley, who had hung on the fringes of the 25-man roster for a few years, was released<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He had already been reassigned to minor league camp\/optioned to AAA, where he was always expected to start the 2015 season.\u00a0 But now he’s been flat out released halfway through spring training.\u00a0 From a team that can’t seem to keep its out-field players healthy.\u00a0 Odd timing?<\/p>\n

The Nats fielders are a set of walking wounded.\u00a0 Werth<\/strong>‘s off-season surgery, Span<\/strong>‘s muscle injury that likely keeps him out til May.\u00a0 Escobar<\/strong>‘s issue.\u00a0 And now word comes out that Anthony Rendon<\/strong>‘s sore knee hasn’t improved and there’s “no timetable<\/a>” for his return.\u00a0 That’s two outfielders, a second baseman and a third baseman; all positions that Kobernus can and has played.\u00a0 Why cut him now?<\/p>\n

Perhaps it isn’t that odd, considering that the team views him as an OF, and he had fallen far down the pecking order of OFers in the organization.\u00a0 Even given the injury crunch the team was facing, most reading the tea leaves are looking at Tony Gwynn<\/strong> Jr. making the 25-man roster to provide depth instead of existing 40-man OF options like Kobernus or Brian Goodwin<\/strong> (who hasn’t gotten a single spring training AB in a major league game, indication that he’s still hurt?).\u00a0 Gwynn is hitting the cover off the ball so far in spring (for whatever that’s worth), and he hits from the left-hand side (unlike Kobernus).\u00a0 So the Nats are going to need 40-man space … and at this point perhaps the options-constrained guys like Tyler Moore<\/strong> or even Xavier Cedeno<\/strong> may very well make the opening roster.\u00a0 So Kobernus gets cut.<\/p>\n

I think there’s room for Kobernus in another org; in fact he seems like the kind of player that Billy Beane<\/strong> and Kobernus’ home town Oakland A’s would take a shot at.\u00a0 Hope he can continue his career somewhere.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Word came out tonight that Jeff Kobernus, long time farm hand and former 2nd round pick out of UC Berkeley, who had hung on the fringes of the 25-man roster for a few years, was released. He had already been reassigned to minor league camp\/optioned to AAA, where he was always expected to start the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-natsgeneral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10343,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10340\/revisions\/10343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}