Continuing to ease my way back into baseball…
At least three different times today, I heard people on TV or radio discussing the Alfonso Soriano situation and wondering who was the blame, the team or the player. Seems like an easy call to me. It’s the player.
Blaming the Nationals for not clearing it with Soriano first, before they traded for him? Why should they have to? They are his employer. It’s not like they’re asking him to squeegee windshileds in the parking lot, or paint kids faces at the county fair… it’s still baseball, right? His contract indicates that he should play baseball, and not second base, correct?
For $10 million/year, if Frank Robinson wants Alfonso Soriano to be a bullpen catcher and rub hot oil into the right arm of John Patterson, that’s exactly what he should do. He’s a player. Players have coaches. Coaches tell players what position to play. That’s how this goes.
So the Nationals are supposed to try and shovel his ass out to left field again today, and if he again refuses, they can just not pay him. I like that idea.
Raj
I blame them both.
Soriano, for not being a team player. What an ass. He sucks at 2b and he expects the Nationals to tell Vidro to go jack off somewhere else on the field. He is paid millions to do what his team tells him to.
Nationals get blame because they knew Soriano was going to have a problem with moving. Why bring a guy like that onto your team in the first place. That was just ignorance and they deserve all the bullshit Soriano is going to give them. This isn’t Utopia, you have to deal with reality, comes with the territory of being a GM. Being right doesn’t always make it worthwhile.
March 22, 2006 at 10:23 am
Doug
If owners and fans expect players to start listening to their coaches, then the owners better start paying the coaches more then players and giving them a little more clout.
It’s a business, and whoever has the bigger paycheck also is going to have the bigger say so 99 out of 100 times.
March 22, 2006 at 11:37 am
Adam
Jim Bowden is retarded. Soriano has said multiple times that he doesn’t want to play in the outfield and is willing to sit out rather than do it….so of course Bowden trades for him to play the outfield. What the hell?
March 22, 2006 at 12:24 pm
Brandon
Though I mostly blame Soriano, the Nats should have known what a petulant shithead Soriano is.
I think Soriano’s refusal to move to the outfield primarily involves the Hall of Fame. How many second basemen put up the offensive numbers he does? Not many. Another five or seven seasons like he’s had and it’s enough to put him among the elite. Maybe the leader in HR and RBI. But how many left fielders in the Hall put up numbers like his? Bonds, Teddy Ballgame, Musial, Joe Jackson. Even Manny’s numbers dwarf Soriano’s.
Maybe someone should just tell him that he’s one of the worst defensive infielders in the game, and they want to move him so he’ll stop embarrassing himself.
March 22, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Bouj
DQ him and trade him back to the AL immediately.
I heard Gammons yesterday point out that Soriano is the worst defensive 2B in baseball since 2001, and it’s not close. And that he’s a basically a DH, so he needs to go back to the AL for his own good.
And newsflash to Soriano: you have to be on the active roster this season to reach free agency. You do that, and you can go sign anywhere you want. Being a butcher in LF isn’t going to hurt you’re next contract since you are already a butcher at 2B and no one is signing you for your glove. So STFU and lose some fly balls in the sun…at night…indoors.
March 22, 2006 at 12:57 pm
theotheruw
I think he came up as a SS for the Yankees, but they had Jeter, so they moved him to left. Then they moved him from left to second when Knoblauch woke up one morning and couldn’t throw to first. So he’s been a team player. Some people suspect that he doesn’t want to embarass himself in left. It’s one thing to boot a hard grounder – people aren’t shocked by that. It’s another to misplay a fly ball. People ridicule you for that. So it’s understandable if he thinks he’s going to make a fool of himself. The guy never caused trouble in Texas or NY, never called out teammates, and he played hard. He just wants to play a position he feels comfortable in. The Nationals are his employer but he didn’t sign with them; it wasn’t his choice. In Texas he always said he wouldn’t move to LF. So the Nationals should have known better.
March 22, 2006 at 1:26 pm
nirwin
Did the Nationals make a move this offseason for a shortstop that I’m forgetting about? Last season, Christian Guzman was the single worst player in Major League Baseball, and it wasn’t even close. I’m actually convinced they could have played a Little Leaguer at short last season and would have gotten more production and better defense than they got from Guzman. Why not stick Soriano over at short? He’ll probably feel more comfortable there and you’ve found a way to keep Guzman’s worthless ass off the field and out of the lineup. Everybody’s happy. The Nationals would then be required to find somebody to play left field, but by wanting to put Soriano there, they’ve basically already said that they can get any worthless lump to go out there and play defense, and whoever this worthless lump is, he’s going to be better than Guzman at the plate by default.
March 22, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Mullet
I’ve been wondering the same thing, nirwin.
March 22, 2006 at 9:30 pm
Adam
Soriano is, by far, the worst defensive second basemen in the league. He had almost as many errors as the second basemen with the second and third most COMBINED. Playing him at short would be a disaster. In all honesty he probably needs to be a DH somewhere in the AL but it doesn’t look like that’s happening anytime soon. I haven’t seen a whole ton of Vidro but I know he’s a pretty solid defensive 2nd basemen, does he have the arm to play short and let Soriano play 2nd? Not that it really matters anyway since he agreed to play leftfield today.
March 22, 2006 at 11:02 pm