Things I Just Don't Get

There are some things I just don’t understand. I’ll put it right out there. I don’t understand the way General Managers operate and I don’t understand the way Major League Baseball punishes players.

I’m a Philadelphia sports fan. I root for all four of the teams from the City of Brotherly Love. I don’t intend to whine about how my team just won a championship. First of all, counting the 2008 Phillies, the professional sports teams I root for have won two championships in my lifetime. The other came when I was just short of two years old. Second, I don’t demand or expect my favorite team to win every single year. I’m not a Yankees fan after all. I would, however, like my teams to make intelligent front office decisions and I would like them to be competitive, because, well, I like watching baseball in September and I didn’t get to do it for the vast majority of my childhood.

In the past two days, two things involving the Phillies have struck me.

First, the Tampa Bay Rays signed former Phillie Pat Burrell to a two-year, $8 million per year deal. On October 31, the Phillies offered the 32-year-old Burrell two years, $22 million. Burrell declined. On December 12, the Phillies signed 37-year-old Raul Ibanez to a three-year, $30 million deal. On January 5, Burrell agreed to his current deal with the Rays. Quite simply, this makes my head hurt. I get it. The economy’s bad. There are a ton of outfielders on the market. In October, Burrell thought he could get more than he could in reality. Does Phillies GM Ruben Amaro, Jr. not get this? How is that possible? Instead, he leaves his lineup completely devoid of a right-handed power bat, in order to replace Burrell with a 37-year-old with a lefty with a better average, worse power numbers, and a similarly crappy glove who is making 20 percent more with an additional year on the contract. Um … really? Meanwhile, there are still a ton of outfielders on the market. So why the rush to sign Ibanez, Ruben? Pat Gillick is gone and presumably with him is the proclivity to sign anyone from Seattle. Wouldn’t it have been worth the wait instead of signing Ibanez for twice his worth? Who knows, maybe this will work out. Maybe Burrell just really wanted to DH. Maybe that was worth $3 million a year to him. Still, I don’t get it.

Second, as you’ve probably heard, Major League Baseball has suspended J.C. Romero 50 games next season for taking a performance enhancing drug, even though he checked with three sources, two nutritionists and the MLBPA, before taking it to ensure it wasn’t banned. The MLB actually isn’t claiming that Romero intentionally did this, instead finding him guilty of “negligence.” A lot of this bothers me. First of all, it will actually keep players from checking on drugs they are about to take if they can’t rely on the opinions of the people with whom they check. In addition, 50 games? Seriously? This is absurd. Why would MLB punish someone who acts negligently (even though, he clearly didn’t) to the same extent that they would punish someone who acted with the requisite intent? Maybe law school is just warping my worldview, but this befuddles me.

On a scale of one to Gus Johnson, I’d give this post a Mitch Williams.