Brandon Wood was called up from Triple-A on April 21, received a grand total of nine at-bats in 15 days with the Angels, and has now been optioned back to the minors.

Playing every day in the minors is certainly better for Wood's development than sitting on the bench in the majors, but the Angels clearly weren't planning to actually give him any action when they called him up and at this point the benefit of more time at Triple-A is questionable. After all, Wood has already played 225 games at Salt Lake, hitting .286/.357/.554 with 58 homers and 51 doubles.

Despite those nice-looking (and park-inflated) raw stats most projection systems aren't optimistic about Wood, predicting that he'd be a below-average hitter now and pegging him as a low-average, high-power hitter in the mold of someone like Joe Crede over the long haul. If the Angels view him similarly that would explain their reluctance to play Wood, but if that's the case why not simply trade the 24-year-old former top prospect?

There's no doubt that Wood's value is significantly lower now than it was 2-3 years ago, but he's young enough that there are surely still teams that would be willing to let him sink or swim in the majors. Calling him up a few times per season to basically sit on the bench for two weeks isn't doing Wood any favors and unless the Angels reverse course by handing him a job soon his potential trade value is going to dry up even further.

After a thousand plate appearances at Triple-A and a bunch of brief call-ups to the majors, what exactly is the Angels' plan for Wood at this point?

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