Game 104, Mariners at Blue Jays
DMZ · July 27, 2008 at 9:07 am · Filed Under Mariners
Washburn v Marcum… supposedly. As I write this.
There may have been no better time for Washburn’s little streak of good results — the team’s finally shopping people, and he’s been turning in good performances for long enough that his ill start to the season and just horrible May seem forgotten. If it helps the team move him, well, good work all around.
Comments
128 Responses to “Game 104, Mariners at Blue Jays”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Wrong.
Washburn hasn’t ‘fixed’ anything. Remember that ‘blind squirrel finding nuts’ business? Yeah. Jarrod has pitched above and beyond is true talent/skill level the last few starts. He is not NOT going to be the second coming of Jaime Moyer.
If the M’s can simply unload his salary, good for them. Don’t push it.
That said, it was a nice win. Apparently the possible trade chits are recognizing they’ve got a good chance to get out of Seattle and are performing for their potential suitors. Huzzah.
Shhhh, he absolutely has fixed his mechanics!
< .< >.>
Found this on Yahoo’s MLB Rumor page about our trade bait:
Who is this Mariners official??? Why can’t/couldn’t he kick Bedard’s ass? And if he can’t, then isn’t there anyone else that can? It drives me crazy how poorly this organization is run.
Oh yeah! That too. I should go add that to my splitter post.
Nationals .365. 38-66
Mariners .375 39-75
Padres. .387 41-65
Why does this belief that Bedard “needs to have his ass kicked and pitch through it” persist? It’s insanity.
FWIW, Olney weighs in this afternoon with: “The Yankees are willing to take on the bulk of the approximately $14 million still owed to Washburn for the rest of this year and next year, but they have no intention of including anything more than a marginal prospect in the deal. “
Mariners .375 39-75
Now that’s just wishful thinking.
Why does this belief that Bedard “needs to have his ass kicked and pitch through it†persist? It’s insanity.
Because MLB ballplayers are manly men, of course!
Anyone making that kind of money should forgo any concern for their post-baseball career or even the rest of their PRESENT career. The only game that matters in THIS one!!one Well, and being nice to folks in the media. They are the king-makers after all.
I wasn’t and don’t think the quoted M’s official was refering to his injury and pitching through it. It was a statement about his overall performance and attitude here in Seattle when he was healthy.
The guy who thinks Bedard needed a good ass-kicking needs a good ass-kicking.
His performance has been below expectations (though still very good) because he’s been hurt. His attitude is no different here than it was in Baltimore. The media and some fans bash Bedard because he’s a symbol of everything that was wrong-headed about the M’s approach to 02008, and it’s not his fault.
The whole team needs a good ass kicking.
Frick. Reading quotes like that about Bedard just make me furious. Not because of anything Bedard has or hasn’t done, but rather because of how this FO harped on character and chemistry for so long instead of talent . . . and then they didn’t even deliver character or chemistry on this team. Now we’re probably going to sell him for ten cents on the dollar just because he isn’t a freaking teddy bear.
Its so sad that last year, seemed so much fun at the time, but was truly the worst thing that could have possibly happened. As bad as Bavasi’s first 4 offseasons were overall, he pulled out all the stops this time. Silva, Johjima, and the Bedard trades seem worse than all of his previous moves put together.
I’m happy that we at least are getting out from under Washburn, but that will be tempered by a pretty bitter pill if Baltimore gets a haul for Sherrill. The AJ trade is starting to look like the baseball equivalent of the Hershel Walker trade, with us, of course, on the wrong end of it. The O’s are nearly going to rebuild off of that one trade.
112-
Thats another thing that I don’t understand, is if Bedard’s personality “problems” were well known prior to this year, why did Chowie, Bavasi, et al decide to not only bring him in, but give up the farm for him . . .
Agree with the first part of that statement. Disagree with the second. You can’t completely let Bedard off the hook for underachieving and being an A-hole. The quote by the “Mariner’s official” sums up exactly what is wrong with the organization as a whole. The official said that Bedard has to be shipped off because essentially the M’s aren’t capable of managing him. That’s really sad. But poor management doesn’t entirely excuse Bedard. He is another defective cog in a broken machine.
You do realize the same people who are pushing the “Bedard is a jerk” agenda so hard are the ones whose job is made more difficult because he doesn’t care about pleasing the media, right?
I’d be very cautious about forming a definitive opinion of someone’s character based on what the media says about them.
Bedard is defective because he is hurt. If you want to be mad at him for that, then by all means go right ahead, but that seems pretty silly to me.
I completely agree that this statement is further proof that there are some huge problems in the organization. I just disagree that Bedard is part of this problem. The M’s got exactly what they paid for, they just thought they were paying for something different. Not his fault.
You guys are probably right. I just had a lot of hope riding on Bedard and this season’s Mariners. I’ll admit I not only drank the Kool Aid prior to this season, I chugged it. I was drunk off of it. I was ready to root on a contender. When high hopes are dashed by such utter failure it manifests itself in this frustration and contempt. I guess I’ll call it Bavasitis. Whatever it is, it hurts. And it doesn’t seem to be getting much better.
I see no evidence that Bedard is an “A-hole.” What I do see is a local media that hates him because he doesn’t spew a series of cliches that they can just write down and mail in between cocktails. That he forces them to get up off their lazy asses and actually do more than ten minutes of actual work per day is a reason to like him, not hate him, in my opinion. Of course it’s no great achievement since the scribes just mindlessly parrot the cliches from the next guy and go back to their drunken stupor, but Bedard is doing what he can. Sure, once you reach the big leagues there’s the presumption that PR is an additional component to the job that comes with the territory, but I’m not going to jump to conclusions about the character of a guy I’ve never met just because he isn’t good at it or doesn’t want to play along. I certainly am not going to take seriously the judgments made by others who obviously have a reason to cast him in the worst possible light.
As for drinking the kool-aid… you need to read USSM more. 🙂
(Feb 7)
(Feb 9)
USSM: your anti-kool-aid
Gee, if we’re lucky Bedard will break 100 this season — 100 innings pitched. He may even start 20 games by the time the season’s over.
Load that sucker up with NSAIDs and let’s see what he can do in August to top those numbers.
————–
joser, you see NO evidence that Bedard may be an A-hole? How about treating the Seattle media like lepers from the get-go, as if they had Baltimore credentials and moved from the Orioles press box when he was traded?
The Seattle media had done NOTHING to damage his delicate psyche or give him any reason to diss them …. well, other than have that little hip problem in Spring Training that was found out by somebody to have been a problem from years ago (i.e., making him seem like “damaged goods” or at least someone who was hiding a possibly congenital problem from EVERYBODY).
Someone asked a question about that, I imagine, and he promptly got a real bad attitude about it. Writers shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells around these guys.
So Bedard doesn’t like the media. Who cares?
Karen-
Bedard is terse with the press, but that’s different than being an a-hole. The press makes him out to be an a-hole because he doesn’t buddy around with them and give them long, congenial interviews. It’s not his personality, and being a media darling is not in his job description. And really, I find him to be hilarious.
As far as his durability; it’s not his fault. He can’t do anything to change the fact that he’s injury prone; some people just are. If a player is susceptible to injury, the smartest thing they can do is learn their limits and never try to exceed them (unless we’re talking playoffs, do-or-die games, etc.) Bedard does the correct thing and he catches hell for it.
Every time someone criticizes Bedard for not “pitching through it” and someone agrees them, it puts us (and quite possibly managers, players and front offices) further and further away from recognizing that it’s pretty much the worst thing you can do.
I had to look up “terse” in the dictionary to be sure of what you meant, aaron c. You’re partly right about that: (Ex: “short, brusque Ex: ‘dismissed me with a terse “no’ “) — at least, from what I’ve heard and read of his encounters with the Seattle media up to a couple of days ago.
Didn’t you hear about Softy’s buddy who tried to talk to Bedard the other day, off the record, just to get an update on his progress from “the horse’s mouth”? The guy barely opened his mouth when Bedard started ranting at him — a little more longwinded than terse — saying he wasn’t having any problems except from “you guys” — the guy had never even spoken to Bedard before, and it was off the record…until the rant, anyway. The guy came back rather crestfallen and told Softy about it, and Softy went ballistic on the air.
I guess that REALLY tears it, as far as Bedard is concerned.
well, actually, no. One reason some of us feel the media has gone a bit overboard on Bedard.
Puckett is KJR’s Mariners reporter; he is over there every day when they are in town. He’s spoken with Bedard before.
Puckett had his own (off-hand) account of the event online just after it happened, and later on air admitted he asked Bedard about 3 or 4 times how he was, trying different ways to get something out of him, before Bedard answered back, not ranting, just pissy. this is what he posted at the time, at the end of a longer daily report:
“Speaking of Bedard….I thought it would be a good idea to go up and chat with him today about how he’s doing health wise and whether or not he’s concerned with his name being mentioned in trade rumors. Bedard was very short in his responses to my questions about how he’s feeling, he continued to reply that, “I’m day-to-day.”
However, when I asked him about how frustrating this season as been, Bedard echoed frustration about his play and how the media. “Very frustrating season. But, it’s especially frustrating dealing with you guys. You guys are the worst.” Then Bedard walked off to the dining room. Oh joy!”
At the risk of sounding insensitive, I couldn’t really care any less whether or not Softy’s pal had his feelings hurt by Erik Bedard. His job is to play baseball. The media doesn’t like him because they think he’s a jerk, and so they’re exceptionally hard on him. This whole line of thinking about Bedard being a wimp for not pitching through injuries is directly related to how the media portrays him. If you want to think he’s a jerk, that’s fine, but how you feel about him personally should not at all relate to how you feel about him as a baseball player.
I don’t get it. So what, even if Bedard is an asshole, who really cares? Brett Meyers is still pitching in Philadelphia after knocking his wife around a couple seasons ago right before a game. He certainly isn’t the first player to bristle at the approach of a sports “journalist”.
Erik Bedard is a pitcher of excellent caliber, when he’s healthy. But, we knew he had health issues didn’t we? We knew he wasn’t friendly with the media, didn’t we? Nothing that’s happened to him or how he’s ‘behaved’ this season should suprise anyone with half a brain. If the team is shocked SHOCKED that Bedard is terse and injury-prone, well…**** them. I knew it. Dave knew it. Derek knew it. Joser knew it. MSB knew it. We ALL knew it. To rail on him now is lazy journalism and fan ignorance. Bedard is a solution to the M’s problems, not a cause.