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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

Load that sucker up with NSAIDs and let’s see what he can do in August to top those numbers.

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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.

As for drinking the kool-aid… you need to read USSM more.

The M’s almost certainly understand that given their runs allowed and runs scored numbers last year, their W-L record should have been worse than it was. But I’d bet, as some of our commenters have pointed out, that they’ve got a whole set of reasons why the win total is for real: the disaster starts, injuries, Rick White, veteran grit and clubhouse leadership. There’s a natural tendency to justify favorable luck as the product of things they did, while dismissing bad results as circumstance.

I don’t know what they think supports their belief that they can run with the Angels this year.

(Feb 7)

Your 2008 simulated Mariners:
Average record: 77-85
Best season: 93-69
Worst season: 59-103
Number of times they won the division (out of 100 simulated seasons): 6
Number of times they won the wild card (out of 100) simulated seasons): 0

(Feb 9)

USSM: your anti-kool-aid

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.

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.