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Saturday, March 18, 2006 |
Contradictionary: A Public Reply To Rich
Do I contradict myself?Certainly, the "large" part applies to me lately, but so does the part about contradicting myself. Rich wrote to ask upon reading my latest commentary on the Edwin Jackson trade whether I was contradicting my earliest sniff:
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)-- Walt Whitman
The trade has the whiff of desperation about it, no doubt about that. When Rich called me tonight to let me know who was being exchanged, we both shared a knowing belly laugh; dealing a pair of starter prospects for a pair of relievers just doesn't make sense. But then I realized something, something that didn't occur to me until just now: namely, this is a frank admission that there are at least two Dodger prospects who are essentially all reputation and nothing else. Gone are the days, paraphrasing from one of the BTF threads I'm too lazy to look up, when even a Dodger turd was highly regarded, because, hey, it's a Dodger turd. From that point of view, this was a practical move, if unsatisfying in some ways.Well, I certainly opened myself up to charges of being two-faced there, didn't I? Partly that's because I am, in fact, rather ambivalent about the trade. On the one hand, Jackson had only been pitching for four years, and will play out his age 22 season this year. On the other, he had never gotten it done with consistency at the major league level (and really, at no level higher than AA). Had it been up to me, I would have kept Jackson, especially considering the returns -- Danys Baez and Lance Carter, cash, and a PTBNL. I later on noticed, ominously, that Jackson's trade went down on the anniversary of the Pedro Martinez/Delino DeShields trade, and that the Dodgers may have given up on Jackson too soon. Evidence of my indecisiveness is available; given Jackson's early returns, it's still possible for him to be a useful part -- despite his early spring zeroes, and despite his recent six-earned-run shelling in 3.1 IP at the hands of the Tigers. He needs more developmental time, and in an environment that doesn't punish his every mistake.
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