Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

I was listening to one of the two sports radio stations today and they were interviewing Times columnist Jerry Brewer and I felt as if there was something missing from my dashboard or steering column. I wanted to push a button that would send some volts into Jerry to get him to stop with the jabberwocky.

I’m going to paraphrase his remarks, but some context is in order for you best get Jerry’s remarks. His message is not solely his, but has coalesced amongst the reporters and columnists. So here we go:

1. They have not really beat anyone, it’s a mirage.
2. They have five guys and Felix, need to spend money on free agents to have better bats in the middle of line up.
3. Team may or not be for sale, have to believe Howard Lincoln’s statement at Ichiro goodbye.
4. Unless they win the wild card and finish .500 or better this does not mean anything.

The first remark has been answered and they have beat who is in front of them. The mirage statement is emblematic of the complete lack of understanding of what has happened and continues to happen.

The winning formula since the all star break has been: 1. pitching 2. defense, and 3. enough hitting. First off, its not just Felix its depth through out the starting rotation and great flexibility with the relief pitching and a great young closer.

What Brewer, Baker, Stone et. al., oddly they’re all with the Times, are postulating is that this team does not look like the Yankees or Red Sox or Cardinals or their fantasy team, or in the case of Baker the 93 Blue Jays. They do look like the Rays, just not as far along in the process as the Rays are.

Here is something none of them get. Looking at the full year stats of players that are playing their first or second full year in the majors do not look like players in their prime. To say they’re inadequate players and you need to get better hitters is wrong. They will continue to improve and get better, but if you want to continue to sign the below top grade free agents like they have for the last twelve years and trade these guys away, I would say its been done to no end here and let this play out some more.

The town’s alive for the first time in years about baseball and you don’t think its good enough. Let’s leave that to later.

They kept Vargas who has done well. Beavan is more than just good, maybe not as good as Fister, but just fine. Iwakuna’s arm appears to have recovered. He’s a great four or five. There are guys coming, not just the big three, but Ramirez and some others that can fill in for Millwood.

This might be one of the best defensive teams in baseball right now. In this park, you don’t want to field a slow pitch softball team. That is why Ryan, Seager and Ackley and Saunders are critical.

The team probably is for sale, maybe not this winter but the next might be very likely.

Whether this team finishes .500 or makes the wild card is not critical to suggest that there has been great, great development and improvement from last year.

That most of the writers in this town do not get what is happening is apparent.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2012 at 5:26 pm by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.