The Nats are out of their minds if they trade Dmitri.No, and that's a stupid thing to say. Even if you could do enough heavy lifting to mount a reasonable argument for hanging on to Dmitri (and don't think for a minute that Boswell is going to), an honest arguer would have to admit that there's some merit to the idea of trading him. This is Boswell at his worst: not just wrong, but unwilling to allow dissent. BLAH BLAH BLAH, as the man himself is wont to say.
1) He's good,
He's playing over his head, and everyone not wearing homer goggles knows it.
his teammates love him
And how exactly does that fit into the Plan?
and he wants to stay.
So did Soriano. The difference is that Soriano had options.
2) Throughout his career, he hasn't gotten injured much despite being the captain of the Bad Body Team. He throws himself __well, sort of__ at ground balls. He runs out a triple and bounces back up. You might even see him in leftfield sometime. Then, perhaps, he could be the most comical leftfielder I have ever seen as well as the funniest first baseman. (He may NOT be the worst. But he's close. There are high school first basemen __probably 1000+ of them__ who scoop low throws better.I got eyestrain looking for a point here. I think he's making two observations: 1) it's funny to watch fat guys run! and B) Dmitri Young is bad at everything but hitting. Can't argue with either one of those.
So maybe Boswell isn't making very good arguments, but at least he's been staying on point. Right?
3) Will Nick Johnson come back at all this year? Will he come back next year? If he does, how good will he be? Once Bo Jackson started having "hip problems," how did that work out? When has any Johnson injury NOT turned out to be significantly worse than THE WORST available medical analysis. Nick and John Patterson don't look the same and they don't have the same reputation. Nick (maybe because he looks the part) is seen as a tough guy. But both have one thing in common. They only play when they feel 100%. And they don't feel 100% too often, do they? Patterson is a more extreme case. He's only had one 9-win season. Johnson has had productive seasons. But I see no reason the Nats should be wedded to Johnson as their "1st baseman of the future" for the 2010 time frame when they want to contend. Maybe he can be part of that Plan. Or maybe you should use him as a tradeable piece when he's healthy so you can develop or sign a 35-homer bat to put at 1st base. Wait, what were we talking about? Caller? Hello?Wow. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting Boz to go into his tarditional "tough guys play hurt" routine -- he didn't even mention Ryan Church. When I mentioned earlier that this chat was Boswell at his worst, I hadn't even read this part. The only thing worse than snotty BLAH BLAH BLAH Boz is Dr. Boswell, MD, an experienced practitioner who diagnoses all baseball injuries as vaginitis.
The only part of this I'm going to bother to argue with is the Johnson/Young dilemma that Boswell's invented. There isn't one. Neither one of these dudes is going to be around 2010, and keeping Dmitri Young for the last few months of the season because Nick Johnson gets hurt all the time is the kind of logic parody you only find in Boswell chats.
In other Post/Meathook news, Barry Svrluga has a very much worth reading profile of Young. There's a lot of interesting stuff there, including quite a bit I didn't know. I didn't know he went into the stands after a fan, for instance. I also don't particularly blame him.
Once again, though, Young's assault on a female acquaintance is glossed over. Svrluga goes deeper into it than most -- we hear about his guilty plea and community service -- but it's treated essentially as a victimless crime, one more obstacle for this great but troubled man to overcome.
Enjoy the All Star Game, everybody!
4 comments:
What about hoverboards. Can we at least have hoverboards in our future?
You cannot say "trade Dmitri Young" in a vacuum. If the best offer are a gross of used baseballs, or their equivalent (such as, say, Scott Williamson), you pass. The days of teams dealing prospects for half-season rentals is SO over.
Take x number of top young prospects (your Hunter Pences, your Ryan Brauns, your Matt Kemps, your Tim Lincecums, whatever) -- how many of them were obtained from another organization for a half-season rental? I honestly don't know the answer, but I bet it is an exceeding small minority.
The Brewers obtained a raft of young talent because they stunk for a decade and got high draft picks as a result. If you insist on building with youth, that is the way you will have to do it, because in practice, no one is giving up young (cheap) studs for older (expensive) rentals.
Obviously you don't trade Meat Hook for a bag of balls or a crippled veteran. Neither are you going to get someone like a Hunter Pence or Tim Lincecum for him. But a team should be able to get someone with a decent amount of potential from a team that really needs a DH/1B to put them over the top.
JimBo should be targetting someone who ranks in terms of upside between Shairon Martis (whom we got in exchange for Stanton) and Garrett Mock + Matt Chico (who we got for Livan).
Anon: You're quite right about the vacuum. I considered talking about the kind of haul the Nats could get, but I didn't want to overload the post.
No, we wouldn't get much for Young. The other GMs aren't stupid. Well, as long as you leave Krivsky out of it. This is more of a Daryle Ward deal than a Livan Hernandez one. But anything more than a bag of baseballs has a better chance to help the Nats when they'll need it than Dmitri does.
You can't (and I'm not accusing you of this; I'm accusing Boz) approve of the Plan and advocate keeping Young. It's so inconsistent as to be Boswellian.
In other words, what Simon said.
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