He’s rested, he’s ready…
DMZ · January 3, 2009 at 8:40 am · Filed Under Mariners
Left-handed power, bargain price, willing to accept a one-year deal, West Coast… Barry Bonds underwent hip surgery to ensure he’s ready for the 2009 season!
What?
Weirdly, this story’s not carried on MLB.com, where the stories are not subject to the approval blah blah blah…
I don’t believe the ramifications of signing Junior and Bonds are in the same stratosphere.
There’s no way of really knowing for sure, but if they were going to impact the attitude in the clubhouse, I imagine that both of them could foster resentment amongst their teammates.
Bonds is reasonably likely to be good, so players won’t resent that an inferior player is taking their playing time and hurting the team, but they might resent that he’s an ass or at least that the media will focus on him. And he would be subject to the same drug testing that they are in 2009, so I’m not sure how much the cheating thing specifically would be an issue.
Griffey is likely to be fairly bad–especially relative to what he’ll get paid and the amount of attention that he’ll garner–so players might resent that he’s losing games or that he’s taking their playing time or that the media keep writing stories about Griffey and ignore most of the rest of the team. Which could be a problem even if Griffey is a really nice guy and the fans love him.
As for the relative magnitudes of the problems, I would guess that Bonds would be a somewhat bigger problem, but that it wouldn’t be as big of a difference as the media might lead you to believe. Signing Griffey for PR reasons would be more or less like the M’s hired the coach’s son to make the coach happy. No players like having the coach’s son on the team unless he’s clearly the best player out there.
I’ve never seen any reason not to sign Bonds that doesn’t come from a mindless knee-jerk reaction colored by the media choosing him as the whipping boy for the entire PED problem in baseball.
I’ll bite.
– He may be looking at jail time after March. It’s not unreasonable to not want to sign somebody who will be physically unable to make your roster because he’s in federal custody.
– He’s old, and after a year off, it’s an open question whether he could perform at his age 42 level at age 44.
– The Mariners as an organization don’t want to be signing steroid users who are unrepentant (Morse admitted it).
Can the professional ethicist hit for power and play LF?
He can’t be an any worse teammate than Washburn or Silva. I don’t think we’ll hear quotes of him wanting to beat up Ichiro, or blaming other people for his own performance problems.
I’ve always felt he got a bad rap, in much the same way that Erik Bedard does. The media asks stupid questions (“how did it feel?”), he chooses not to answer them, which makes *him* the bad guy.
Really? OK, so how about this:
ABs for Shelton, Branyan, Balentien, Clement…hell, for that matter, maybe Johnson, Carp, Tui and Morse by the end of the year.
There is NO sense in signing Bonds, Griffey (and maybe even Jones) from a pure baseball perspective. They figuratively and literally are on their last legs. How do they help us when we really could be competitive?
The signing of any of these guys frankly smacks of Bavasi logic.
Jeff, no offense, but could it be that you just called yourself out?
UZR/150 had him at +12 last year, and ~17 for his three year average.
Whether or not there’s a “pure baseball” reason to sign those guys depends on your definition of that term. If there’s a way Bonds or Jones wins games next season without blocking player development, sure. Wins are always good.
But Mike Morse needs at-bats, Derek!
I’m really surprised no one caught the Nixon (Richard, not Otis) reference in the title — that should have made it clear to everyone that the post was a joke . . .
I haven’t got any work done today because I’m distracted. Darn you, Barry Bonds! (shakes fist) Darn you to heck!
/fixed
Seriously though, if he wouldn’t disrupt the clubhouse too much, he could just be worth the gamble.
Bring him, all dissention will fade when the first ball goes over the right field fence.
If after 762 home runs, no dissension has faded, what makes you think that after one over the right field fence of Safeco Field, it will?…
Um, you really mean that about Carp and Morse?????? And why should we care about Shelton and Branyan? Particularly when Bonds is better than even money to out-produce them—the point of those is that they’re cheap and easily expendable.
I see some twitching of the knee there.
How many HRs does Bonds need to pass Oh as the all-time leader? Might be nice for a team to have him on the roster for the chase. Kind of sucks for Bonds that he appears to be stalled at #2 on the all-time HR list.
vr, Xei
OK, I admit I have no idea what that means.
Jeff’s original point was that he’s never seen an opposition to Bonds based on anything but ‘a mindless knee jerk reaction’. I say there are other legitimate baseball reasons.
Absolutely. Having cake and eating it at the same time is great. But I still think not very realistic in this case.
But most importantly, whatever happened to this?…
Griffey is, and Bonds could done, but CHONE projections show Jones as a 7.5 million dollar player if he’s only an average defender. Since he only gets paid 5 million next year, there is definitely sense in getting Jones.
I think we will be seeing the automated projection systems breaking down when it comes to the Andruw Jones projection(s), especially the ones that have Andruw Jones worth $7.5Mil.
vr, Xei
Andruw Jones was a train wreck last year. 76 strikeouts, 3 home runs in 209 at bats. He made Yuni look disciplined at the plate.
Before I started reading, I thought this was almost going to be a Cam Bonifay joke or something. Let Bonds go rot, as he should, on the sidelines of life from now on. Yeck.
Sign Bonds, we could use a player like Bonds teaching the young players how to be an absolute cancer in the locker room.
If no one signed him last year, no one’s going to sign him this year. Some day, the GMs will come clean and explain why he wasn’t offered a job last year (maybe he just demanded too much money?). Until then, though, we’re just going to have to be content knowing that he’s unsignable… for some reason.
speaking of B Bonds, the free online game this morning is Millwood’s no-no vs the Giants. Both Barry & I think the HP ump has a very generous strike zone.
btw, Harry Kalas is another announcer with no compunctions about mentioning that Millwood has a no-hitter going.
Bonds’ agent last year was supposedly willing to sign league-minimum deals.
Derek, I’m sorry that an entire thread worth of comments (well, with the exception of the Ancient Mariner) fails to recognize a joke when they see one.
Nobody’s signing Bonds, folks. Explaining humor sucks, but… hello? The humor is that this news was put out there at all, that “Oh, Barry had knee surgery? Well, we’ll for sure sign him now!” would ever enter the heads of ANY GMs who wouldn’t consider signing him last season when the trial wouldn’t have impacted THAT season.
Get it?
Jeez.
Normally I won’t even wade into a Bonds thread (“abandon hope of sensible debate, all ye who enter here”) but I saw this rumor and thought “I bet Junior came up in the Bonds thread” and, yep, sure enough, so that makes this on topic:
Of course agents say all sorts of things to the press. Some of them are even true. Sometimes.
Personally, I think the Rays should sign Bonds. Why not? Give him his own locker room at Tropicana where he can entertain the press, or not, as he pleases. Would certainly get fans out to see/boo the Rays when they play in the other AL East cities…
As Derek said, “Weirdly, this story’s not carried on MLB.com.”
Or, more to the point, “What?”
Bobby Abreu, yes. Barry Bonds no. Abreu has some legs and solves a power issue without the media frenzy that Bonds brings. I am not opposed to Bonds due to speculation of steroids, I am opposed because he will bring distractions that we just do not need.
*yaawwwwwwwwn* Barry who?
Hells to the no.
With all the positive moves the M’s have been making, I’d hate to see them bring in anyone that’s going to be a negative presence or a general distraction…we don’t want the media circus. I like what Z, et al., are doing, and I’d rather we get to do it just as quietly as possible so when we are back int he thick of things, it’ll be a nice surprise for the rest of the west.
Aaron M.
He’ll take a cheap one year deal, Abreu most likely will not. Jones and Jr.? Done and more done.
Even at his advanced age Bonds would likely outproduce any of the three and quite possibly Jr. and Jones combined. I’ll even boldly predict he’s still a much better hitter than anyone on our current roster which sorely lacks that mythical impact bat.
The arguments against seem to have very little to do with winning baseball games. It isn’t likely to happen but I fully support the idea.