On Rubén Gotay: He's an intriguing player, but a lot of the young guys we have on our team, they're just babies. They have a little success, that's always nice. But if you start off waxing superlatives on them, it's too early. (Source)When Steve Phillips was here as the Mets' GM (We know, it's best not to think of that dark, five-year period), they had an awesome manager for part of that time in Bobby Valentine. Now that the team has a quality GM in Omar Minaya (not that the team couldn't do much better), we have a miserable, gut-loving, 1880's-style, "my guys," 'I'm the manager and you can't understand my infallible manager logic,' youth-hating, veteran-loving loyalist in William "Willie" Randolph. The kind of guy you can't bring along with you in your new regime, because he's too damn stubborn.
Not that Randolph doesn't have a point. Rubén Gotay is not the next coming of Joe Morgan. He's not even the next coming of Edgardo Alfonzo. But right now, he's hitting way the hell better than José Valentín. That's the point: play the hot hand when you have a bunch of mediocre-to-average players. With Gotay, Randolph has had no choice, as Valentín's been sidelined with a tweaked pinky or something, allegedly breaking up a bar fight in Puerto Rico (read: punched the wall because he is injured and is not going to get his 400 plate appearances, and thus will not get his $4.8 million option for 2008 vested). But in other cases, such as that of Paul "heart and soul" Lo Duca vs. Ramón Castro, Randolph has plowed on, plugging the incumbent catcher and his history of inflated batting averages into the #6 spot every day to weakly ground out to second base or occasionally bloop a single to center field, while Mr. Ramón "Blastro" waits on the bench to slam extra-base hits in his limited appearances. It makes us sick.
Of course, Castro and Lo Duca are, like, the same age. It's not pure age discrimination; it's blind loyalty to the status quo. Being weak in the areas of talent evaluation and value maximization, Randolph compensates by not doing anything, taking the part of the calm helmsman who does not whip the wheel around just because the daily winds of the New York City media are swirling about him. And he plays the part well; the only thing is, it hurts the team.
2 comments:
Can I steal your peice of writing for an article on Flushing University?
Seriously, while Randolph at least has an excuse for playing Lo Duca over Castro- much higer salary, better defense that doesn't make up for putrid offense- there's no reasonh why Gotay shouldn't be playing.
Sure you can do whatever, just give me credit or something.
I have a serious weakness in understanding when it comes to catchers' defense. You always hear of a catcher that he is a good handler of pitchers. Honestly, I've never heard that a catcher was bad at that. As far as throwing out runners goes, Ramón's 0-for-whatever this year is just a crazy anomaly, probably due to lack of work. In the past, he has been great at throwing out runners.
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