Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Beltran says Randolph comments distracting team

Carlos Beltran called the Randolph comments and situation a distraction. Really? I would probably call .259 avg, 4 Hr's combined with the over $18 million dollar salary more of a distraction. Or maybe Delgado's sub .220 average and absence of almost all power. Or Pedro being out, or Santana not pitching to expectations. These things have been happening all season, not just since Randolph's comments.

What I would say is that Beltran's comments are disengengious and an attempt at removing himself from the spotlight of his poor performance. A manager cannot affect his team's performance with comments that he is making about upper management. It is impossible and ridiculously stupid to suggest so especially for a guy that is woefully underperforming.

Managers can affect a team negatively in the following ways:

1.Not playing your team leader in HR's everyday such as LaRussa not playing Ludwick

2. Allowing a pitcher to "work out his kinks" at the Major League level instead of at the minor league level even though his minor league performances had been horrible such as in 2006 with Mark Mulder. Mulder got tore up and those games were treated somewhat as not important. The Cardinals barely won the central by 1.5 games.

3. Bunting a guy over to 3rd.

4. Leaving a pitcher with arm problems in to throw 130 pitches.

5. Heavily favoring aging vetrans.

6. Saving your best relief pitcher only for the 9th and only if your team is in the lead.

7. Holding personal grudges against players and allowing this to affect if they play.

8. Making negative public comments about a player. There comes a time where you have to comment about a players poor performance but publically it needs to be left at that.

9. Stealing too much.

10. Taking out an effective pitcher to attempt to capitalize on the lefty/lefty match-up.

1 comment:

Captain Awesome said...

C'mon Beltran. Really? Really??