Ben Revere to Nationals for Drew Storen

[Kin]

Another thing to consider regarding LF is that you might want to have the option of moving Bautista there next year. His defense in Right the last two years has been...not good.

 

[hockeyfan1]

Drew Storen, no stranger to baseball in Canada...he started as a 12 yr. old batboy for the Montreal Expos, (a five year stint right up until the Expos' last season in 2004), and, his father has a Blue Jay connection -- he, along with Buck Martinez, did the satellite radio broadcasts (from 2005 to 2008).

Read it all here:
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=news.nationalpost.com//sports/mlb/newest-toronto-blue-jay-drew-storen-remembers-experience-as-a-batboy-for-montreal-expos-that-was-an-incredible-opportunity

 

[herman]

He's having a slow start to this season...

But he's also a glove break-in magician.

https://sports.vice.com/ca/article/love-honour-and-protect-building-the-perfect-big-league-glove

Ryan Goins, the Blue Jays' dazzling defender of the infield, is sitting at his spring training locker with his glove on his hand as I walk by, so it seemed a good place to stop for a chat. He has been using his "gamer" for five years, the longest he's ever stuck with one glove. He has others scattered around his locker, but they don't measure up, he says.

Or they didn't until Drew Storen came along.

Goins liked the way Storen had shaped his own glove, a bright red deep-pocketed model. So Goins asked the Jays' new reliever whether he could take a new Goins glove and copy the old one. Goins was delighted with Storen's work on a couple of new gloves and spread the word.

"Storen does some kind of voodoo to it," Goins says. "I just showed him my game glove and he tried to do the same thing to these new ones.. He's like a magician with the glove. He did one of Tulo's. He did one of Kevin Pillar's."

So I walked around the corner and spoke to Storen about his magic.

"Yeah, apparently I've got a side gig now," he said with a smile.

Storen starts by steaming.

"We have a little heat-pack thing in there in the trainer's room," he says. "You put towels on the glove and kind of steam it. And then I've got this little hammer thing."

Storen's hammer thing is a mallet with a baseball taped to its face. Until this spring, he used a commercial mallet designed for breaking in gloves, but he found it too light and he didn't like the shape. When his teammates started lining up, the magician figured he needed a proper tool. So he invented one.

The baseball helps him shape the pocket to the player's specification. "So you can get the deep pocket if you want it, and then kind of beat down the hinges there at the bottom to loosen them up," he says.

Storen does custom work. Besides a deep pocket, his own glove has curved fingers to hide the ball from a baserunner's prying eyes, and flared thumb and little finger. Tulowitzki likes a flatter glove?Storen likened it to a paddle?and Storen delivered on that order, too.

During his six seasons in Washington, Storen's glove-shaping talents stayed hidden. Suddenly, using steam and a makeshift hammer, he's gaining renown as an artist.

"I've picked up some pretty good business," he says.

 

[L K]

Storen is down about 2MPH on every single one of his pitches.  Not encouraging.

 

[Highlander]

Damaged good, we want Revere back and Storen can stay around and do the glove ting