The winds blow in baseball probably more than any other sport.
In the NBA, it's pretty much predetermined before the season begins who will be the last four teams standing. In the NFL, there's always a few surprises, but good is good and bad is bad for the most part.
In baseball, the season's long. Sure, there's always a few bad teams that play good for extended stretches and good teams that go in the crapper for a bit just like the other professional sports.
But due to the length of the season, it's the extended length of the good stretches/crappers in sheer number of days to overly analyze it that results in wildly stupid conclusions relating to "trends" and assumptions about "what it all means."
It also means that when it comes to individual players, since there are so many moving parts in baseball and so much verbiage about who could fit where and make an impact, things tend to get lost and the big picture gets obscured.
In short, a lot of people can say anything they want and that's okay. Because it's complicated.
Like Phil.
From this weekend:
...But because of Griffey's popularity and stature, they brought him back while letting their leading home run hitter, Russell Branyan, leave as a free agent.
The flagship Phil column this weekend is in the Dump Griffey vein. It's Phil's new thing. Waive Zambrano. Waive Bradley. Dump Griffey. Because they're not worth the trouble.
They always feel a bit rushed and somewhat out of character, like he's playing above his ability to take hard stances on things. Like he's trying to meet his quota of what sportswriters should do - take a detailed and nuanced position on something a few times a year. Except in Phil's case, it's rarely detailed and/or nuanced. It's usually drivel that tweaks what other people have already said.
To be fair, his Dump Griffey stance this time doesn't actually say that. He simply alludes to it, using the Mariners' unwillingness to resign Branyan as a comparable of "what could have been."
But this is what Phil said about Branyan in February:
Russell Branyan, who should have been more receptive to re-signing with the Mariners, whose general manager, Jack Zduriencik, gave him a chance to increase his at-bats.
And that was the case by all reports. The talk at the time was that Branyan wanted two guaranteed years at something like $5 million per as a bad-backed 34 year-old.
But in February, Phil puts it on Branyan's shoulders on why he didn't sign back with Seattle. Now, it's Zduriencik's fault.
Consistency. That's all.
Look at them now — last in the American League with 3.4 runs per game, dealing with the ugliness of teammates fingering Griffey for sleeping during a game and faced with the awkwardness of how to handle the Griffey story on a daily basis.
Can the M's see the future? It's not like he was Milton Bradley, a guy who you can predict some level of weirdness at some point during the season. This is Ken Griffey, Jr. He's been bad but never in a million years would anyone ever have predicted that the 'sleeping in the clubhouse' storyline would have happened.
If the Mariners simply had kept Branyan, giving him the two- or three-year deal he wanted, they might not have traded for the troubled Milton Bradley or hung on to Griffey. You have to think that would have seemed like a better option, even if Branyan, 34, opened the season on the disabled list with the Indians because of back problems the Mariners knew about.
And if I just would have known the lottery numbers from yesterday, I'd be rich today.
And THREE YEAR DEAL???!!! With a bad back? At 34? I'd love to see Phil as a GM. I can only think he's making this comparison because Branyan has three homers in 56 plate appearances this year for the Indians. I wonder if he also looked at his .245 average on a .375 BABIP and 45% K-rate, a number that is nearly 10% higher than Mark Reynolds' career K-rate, a guy that Phil questioned whether the D'backs to a long-term deal. I wonder.
Signing Reynolds, 26, to a long-term deal = iffy. Signing Branyan - 34, bad back - to a three-year deal = good.
This is why I love you, Phil.
Consistency. That's all.
You can argue the White Sox would have been better off if they had kept Thome and Jermaine Dye, as the Mariners surely would have been with Branyan and not Bradley. That might have kept the White Sox from dealing for Juan Pierre (a trade John Ely seems determined to make them regret).
First, along with Wilson Ramos (getting to him), Jon Ely is Phil's new hard-on. He's determined to find a Kenny Williams deal that blew up in his face. It's ten years now but when it happens, Phil will be there.
Second, I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE the "you can argue" line. Because it's limp-dick writing. Anyone can argue anything. Just listen to Score callers. It's the degree of coherence or stupidity in which the writing is ultimately judged. But if you put a "can" in there, the writer can wiggle out of being pinned down to anything. It then falls into the speculative category that doesn't require quantifying anything. Throw in Dye, a guy who hasn't played this year so there's no body of work to compare anything, and we can speculate away!
But Dye would have had to accept a cut from his $11.5 million salary and at least occasional stints as the designated hitter, and there's no indication he would have done that.
Holy crap! Then why write what was just written? If it was NEVER going to happen, then why is it a topic?
It's easy to see how ego becomes a problem when it is displayed regularly by the likes of Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds. But it's a factor in handling even the good guys at the elite level — such as Griffey, Thome and Dye.
So...wait a minute. I'm lost. Thome? Ego? He wanted to come back. But Guillen wanted to play a different brand of baseball. Thome?
THOME?
By the way, the treatment of the Tacoma News Tribune's Larry LaRue, the reporter who broke the story about Griffey dozing in the clubhouse, is shameful. Players closing ranks against him is no indication he did anything wrong professionally.
And this, along with the Bradley trade, is why this is a topic. A member of the writer fraternity was wronged.
But I have a question. Why did the writer admit to prematurely posting the blog then?
I don't know the real details. Nobody seems to. But there WAS a tinge of piling-on to the story. I wonder if things were going good for the M's, would the story have been published? I doubt it, which displays to the players, however wrong and however nuanced the real truth is, what a certain writer might do if and when he gets an itchy trigger finger on the send button.
The Padres and Giants are looking for run producers but haven't reached out to Jermaine Dye. He could fit in left field in San Francisco but would be severely challenged by the open spaces of San Diego's Petco Park. …
BAH! Dye's in left field now in Phil scenarios. Third-worst outfielder in all of baseball over the last three years but "he could fit".
And "he could fit" in left field in San Francisco but not Petco? AT&T Park's left field dimensions are 339 ft. down the line and 382 in the left field gap. Petco's is 334 ft down the line, branching out to 367 ft. in the gap. So...AT&T has more open space in left. But Dye would fit there.
And both the Padres and Giants are winning with pitching. Part of that has been the good fielding that the pitching has received. Basic logic, really.
The Giants' platoon in left has been DeRosa, Bowker and Velez with UZR/150's of 20.9, 9.1 and 24.8 respectively so far this year. But yes. Let's sign a guy that has put up numbers of minus 21.6, minus 19.4 and minus 18.7 from 2007-2009.
Let's.
After two strong starts in a row, John Ely is set to spend at least the next month in Los Angeles. Dodgers manager Joe Torre says he's going with the rookie from Homewood-Flossmoor until Vicente Padilla comes off the disabled list. Ely could start May 27 at Wrigley Field if Torre decides to skip fifth starter Ramon Ortiz in that turn through the rotation. Ely had a 23 mph difference in pitches Tuesday against the Diamondbacks, throwing his fastball 91 and his curve 68. …
Ely's a bit of a double-whammy. He's a local product and Kenny traded him. So he's a Phil guy.
He's been mentioned by Phil at least eight times since the Pierre trade. I can only imagine if he was traded to the Twins and he pitched with Wilson Ramos catching, the catching über-prospect for the Twins that Phil posited should stay up with the big club, even with Mauer catching.
The theory goes that Gardenhire could find at-bats for Ramos by giving Mauer time off from behind the plate by DHing him a couple times a week and slotting Ramos into the DH role (presumably) another couple times a week. I don't know how Mauer would feel about that given he just signed a monster deal with the Twins to catch and I don't know how Thome and Kubel would feel about losing...well...pretty much ALL their playing time with that DH rotation.
Only Phil knows.
But for right now, with this roster, the Twins know...
The Twins sent catcher Wilson Ramos to Triple A because manager Ron Gardenhire didn't think he could find enough at-bats for him with Joe Mauer healthy again. They would have to be absolutely overwhelmed to trade him, however. …
Please, please, please! Seek a career change, Phil. The world needs you as a GM.
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