Saturday, December 29, 2007

Without Players Like Darin Erstad and GMs Like Houston's Ed Wade, Blogs Like This Probably Wouldn't Exist

I did a quick search on the Houston Chronicle's website to see if anyone there had written something funny and long winded about the 'Stros recent acquisition of Mr. Nails McFormerpunter. Unfortunately, the answer turned out to be "not really." But their general blurb about the signing did have a great quote from Wade (widely regarded as one of baseball's worst decision makers).

"Darin is one of the prototypical professional baseball players," Astros general manager Ed Wade said. "He's made a career out of playing the game the right way. Darin is a veteran who brings a lot to our club and will really help us."

That last sentence is a real doozy. Hopefully they're not counting on him to "bring" anything that resembles an offensive skill set, or "help" them win games. Maybe he's really good at throwing batting practice, or setting up the postgame spread, or something.

The article also mentions that Erstad

will provide depth behind outfielder starters Carlos Lee in left, Michael Bourn in center and Hunter Pence in right.

If your definition of "provid[ing] depth" is literally having someone who's played pro baseball before available to take over for one of your starters should they suffer an injury, then yeah, I guess he will. On the other hand, if your definition of "provid[ing] depth" is having someone who will be productive in his role as a 4th outfielder who gets 200-300 ABs, then no. No he will not.

2 comments:

Derpsauce said...

Look, not that I like the 'Stros or anything, but I really hope for their sake they don't decide one day that Erstad should just displace Bourn as the everyday starter.

Thanks to 2007, I used to LOVE when Darin Erstad was healthy and the White Sox started him....because that meant there was a chance Jerry Owens wasn't playing, who actually found a way to be worse than Erstad.

Jeff said...

I think that saying a ballplayer "plays the game the right way" is like basically throwing your hands up and saying "i don't know what the fuck this guy is good at!"

Noone ever says Albert Pujols "plays the game the right way". They point out that he's a monster of a hitter.