Two more home-runs and four RBIs for Brandon Allen in tonight's 7-5 victory for the Reno Aces. That gives him a line in his eleven games there of .378/.489/1.000. That is not a misprint: he is slugging one thousand, and owns an OPS of 1.489, having gone 14-for-37, with half of his hits leaving the yard. Meanwhile, on the south side of Chicago, Tony Peña has allowed six earned runs in his first four innings of work, for an early ERA of 13.50.

Of course, there's no way Allen can keep that level of production up, and nor is Peña that bad, but seven homers in 37 at-bats does tend to suggest we might just have got the better of this trade. It's certainly nice to see us make a deal which does not immediately turn round and bite us in the ass. I'll keep monitoring his performance as we go forward, see how our potential 2010 first-baseman is doing.

[Update] Here's an interview with Allen from Gambo and Ash on KTAR earlier in the week. Unfortunately, the audio player doesn't seem to like Fanposts, so it's direct link to the MP3 file. Sorry. :-)