Monday, July 16, 2007

Couple of quickies

1) WHY THE HELL IS EMIL BROWN ON A MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM? If you watched tonight's game, you saw Emil, once again thinking he is a H.O.F. left fielder, half-assedly drop a fly ball while basically standing still. A major league baseball player should NEVER, NEVER EVER not make that play. Most MLB players should be able to freaking make a bare-handed catch of that ball.

2) Joey Gathright was optioned to AAA today. I understand the logic in bringing up Reggie Sanders for a couple weeks to increase his trade value, and then trade him...but Bob Dutton made a good point in his Royals notebook (http://www.kansascity.com/sports/story/191514.html):

The Royals are trying hard to trade Sanders, who has roughly $2 million remaining on his contract, and appear willing to eat the contract and accept little in return. Oddly, they show no inclination at this point to release Sanders, which amounts to much the same thing.

BUT ALTERNATIVELY, HERE'S AN IDEA: DEMOTE EMIL BROWN'S ASS. Gathright has an OBP of .390 over 25 games. Brown's is .297 over 65 games. A nimrod (read: Buddy Bell) might make the argument that Brown is a power-hitter, and Gathright is not. Well, Brown's slugging percentage is .330; Gathright's is .370. That breaks down to an OPS for Brown of .627, and .760 for Gathright. Now the [hopefully temporary] reversion to AAA for Gathright couldn't have unilaterally come from Mr. Bell, but I have a sneaking suspicion he had a role in that. But nonetheless, even if it was completely Dayton Moore's idea (unlikely), a manager with a modicum of intellect would have likely vociferously objected to the Royals' sending Gathright down. But I guess that excludes Mr. Buddy Bell.

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