Repko makes good impression but probably can’t win a job
VERO BEACH, Fla. -- Jason Repko will say what may be his final goodbye to Dodgertown this morning when he boards the bus for Jupiter and the team’s final Grapefruit League game of the spring.
And it probably won’t be much longer before his says goodbye to his teammates since there appears to be little room for him on a roster heavy with talented outfielders.
“Obviously it’s a numbers deal. You’ve got your four guys that, if any team had four starting outfielders, they’d be your four starting outfielders,” Repko said after going two for three with a run and his team-high 13th run batted in Monday in a 12-10 loss to the Houston Astros. “I’m just in a tough [place] right now. So I try not to focus on it too much and just let all that stuff hopefully, in the end, wiggle its way out.”
Repko’s first stop as a professional baseball player was Vero Beach, where he came for a mini-camp days after being taken in the first round of the 1999 draft. He has had only 406 big league at-bats since then, however, having lost all of last season to a torn left hamstring suffered during a spring training game in Jupiter.
That made this spring all about offering proof -- proving to himself that he was healed and proving to a new coaching staff that he could play.
“The biggest thing was just getting over the hamstring injury,” said Repko, who is batting .343 and has played exceptional defense. “And really all that other stuff I can’t control.”
So barring a trade or injury to left fielder Juan Pierre, center fielder Andruw Jones and the right-field platoon of Andre Ethier and Matt Kemp, Repko figures to start the season somewhere other than Dodger Stadium.
But he may not be gone long.
“Repko is a quality player,” said bench coach Bob Schaefer. “You can only have a 25-man roster. If you could go farther, then we could be talking. [But] you can only keep four outfielders the way it looks right now.”
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Repko was one of three Dodgers with multiple hits Monday. Rafael Furcal went three for six with a homer, two triples and three runs and Ethier went four for five, falling a double short of the cycle.
“I’ve never hit for the cycle before,” said Ethier, who got close with a wind-blown opposite-field home run that slipped just inside the foul pole in left. He wasn’t apologizing for that, though.
“You have to use the elements,” said Ethier, who is hitting .354 and leads the Dodgers in homers (five), hits (17), runs (11) and slugging percentage (.708). “If you don’t, you’re wasting them.”
Preston Mattingly, son of Dodgers coach and former Yankees great Don Mattingly, also homered, delivering as a pinch-hitter in his first major league at-bat of the spring.
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