The final installment of the Franquelis Osoria Watch

You might, albeit vaguely, remember we ran a feature called the Franquelis Osoria Watch here. It focus on the major league achievements of the Dodger reliever during his relatively short stint with the big club last season.

Franquelis split the 2006 season between the Las Vegas 51's (roughly 80% of his time) and the Los Angeles Dodgers (20% in April-May). His stats in LA were not particularly notable, which in large part decided about his demotion to Vegas. In Nevada he almost quadripled the number of his outings (44) while getting the ERA down to somewhat acceptable level (4.35).

Well, this is the final installment of the Osoria Watch, folks. The Dodgers thought they could slip him through waivers in order not to put him on the 40-man roster and it turned out the Pittsburgh Pirates had Osoria in their plans. They snatched him and will, most probably, use him next season as their core reliever.

Well, it's not like we suddenly depleted the farm with this departure, but I thought Franquelis would be able to see the light of day in SoCal again. Right now, I could only hope the Dodger batters hit the daylights out of him next time we play the Pirates at Chavez.

That's life, Fran. Good luck.