I’m trying to crawl back into baseball, which essentially means crawling from the wreckage of last season, when various nagging injuries cut the year short for me and led to disappointment and then flat-out indifference.
I’ve never in my years as a fan had a season like 2005, and I’m hoping that it was nothing but one of those inexplicable mid-career hiccups that you see so commonly in the statistical line on the back of so many baseball cards.
The ruptured spleen that finally shut me down for good in August appears to be fully healed, and the doctors have given me the go-ahead to resume rehabilitation in earnest.
Warning Track Power has long been the engine that drives Rake Media Worldwide, and I deeply regret the toll my absence has taken on my co-workers, many of whom have lost their jobs or been saddled with extra responsibilities as the advertising revenues generated by my labors have slowly evaporated. Back in late October, the company health club and juice bar was temporarily closed, and let’s just say that I wasn’t exactly unaware of all the fingers pointed squarely in my direction.
I’m not making excuses, but, frankly, that’s created a lot of pressure on me during my long hiatus, and I’ve no doubt there’s been a great deal of grumbling behind my back about my work habits and desire. I certainly can’t blame anybody for thinking that I’m a malingerer on the level of a Juan Gonzalez.
I’m not, though, I swear to you. I’ve just had a few bad breaks of late. I honestly feel like I’ve still got a few good years left in me, and if I have to go to Japan –or even the Northern League– to resurrect my career, so be it.
For now, though, here I am, trying to climb back on a slow moving mule.
I know that an awful lot has happened while I’ve been gone, and I regret to say that I have only the vaguest of ideas of what that “awful lot” might mean.
Since I’ve emerged however tentatively from my hibernation, though, I did notice that the Yankees signed Johnny Damon, which was an unpleasant and disheartening bit of news. I don’t tend to like grown men whose names are Johnny, unless their last names are Carson or Cash, but Damon was a fun player to watch during his time in Boston. He’s also, though, always been something of an enigma to me. I have a hard time understanding how a guy with a career on base percentage of .353 scores so many freaking runs and has a reputation for being such a terrific leadoff hitter. Damon will be thirty-two this season, and his career numbers across the board (a BA of .290 and slugging average of .431) are nothing really special. I suspect that now that his hair is gone and he’s no longer playing half his games at Fenway Park –with Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz batting behind him– he’ll become the latest Yankee free agent bust.
I also noticed that the Twins went on their traditional spending spree and added Luis Castillo, Tony Batista, and Rondell White. Each of those guys could fill some holes or, given their histories and the recent good fortune of the Twins, create some holes.
I like Castillo quite a lot. He’s a terrific defensive player (with three Gold Gloves), but his primary offensive value is his OBP (.391 last year in 122 games; .370 for his career). He’d score a boatload of runs batting in front of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, I’d bet that much. The main problem with Castillo is that he was gimped up for a big chunk of last year and apparently no longer runs well. The guy has hit .300 four of the last six seasons, yet he hasn’t managed to leg out twenty doubles in any of those seasons, and he has almost no power. Given the Twins’ success in driving in base runners last year, I’d have to say that the value of a singles hitter who plays good defense is somewhat questionable, at least until the team develops some real run producers from the 3-5 spots in the batting order.
Rondell White could be one of those run producers, I suppose. White’s a good hitter, but he’s been injury prone. The Twins will try to keep him on the field by using him as the DH, but he’s not a particularly fearsome designated hitter. In his thirteen seasons in the Major Leagues, White has never driven in or scored 100 runs. He’s never even driven in ninety runs, in fact, and he’s never hit thirty homeruns. He’s averaged something like 120 games a season over his career, and played in a total of 218 over his last two seasons in Detroit. They guy has played for six teams in the last five years, and I always assume there’s some good reason for that.
Tony Batista might be the acquisition that’s led to the most rolling of eyes among fans, but I’m not entirely sure why that is. Batista played last year in Japan, but in the preceding seasons he was the closest thing to an offensive lock that the Twins have had in years. His track record says he’ll stay healthy (in the five years before heading to Japan he played in 157, 161, 161, 156, and 154 games and averaged over thirty homers a season). He’s still only 32 years old, and in his last season in the majors, with Montreal, he hit thirty-two homeruns and had 110 RBI. Batista isn’t going to hit for average (he’s a career .251 hitter) and he’ll get on base as infrequently as Luis Rivas, but he’s at the very least proved that he can hit the ball out of the park and drive in runs, and I’d think that would be plenty of cause for optimism among Twins fans.
The moves that the White Sox have made should not, however, be cause for much optimism among Twins fans. I’ll admit that I don’t even know all the moves the White Sox have made, but I do know they signed Jim Thome (and re-signed Paul Konerko), and that is dispiriting news.
The only silver lining there is that Rick Reed is no longer occupying a place in Minnesota’s rotation, so we will at the very least be spared the spectacle of watching Thome launching Reed’s pitches off the tarps in the upper deck.
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