Matt Kata

Kata's season ended in May after he separated his shoulder. He should be healthy again come spring and will compete with Alex Cintron for the starting job at second base. He has hit just .221 in his last 235 AB in the majors (going back to August 2003), so he'll need a good spring to take the job away from Cintron.

We said last year that Kata "needs to make a move before Scott Hairston leapfrogs him at second base on the Diamondbacks' organizational depth chart." Well, we're glad that Kata is a RotoWire subscriber, because he obviously did his best to heed the warning. Kata got an emergency call-up in early June when Junior Spivey went down, and he showed a hot bat over the next two months, hitting over .300 and getting into the lineup nearly every day at either second or third. However, Kata came down to earth down the stretch, hitting just .164 (12-for-73) after August 25. That, combined, with Hairston's great AFL campaign, makes it a crapshoot between Hairston and Kata for the second base job in the spring.

Kata hit .298-11-57 in 136 games at Double-A last year, but he needs to make a move before Scott Hairston leapfrogs him at second base on the Diamondbacks' organizational depth chart. Probably starts 2003 at Triple-A, with little chance of cracking the big-league roster this season.