Friday, November 10, 2006

Let's Do Lunch! (Dodger Style)

Four names keep coming up in light of Lady Drew's latest business decision: Drew himself, Scott Boras, Eric Gagne and Ned Colletti.

  • DREW: " 'At some point, you make your commitments and you stick to them,' he told the Orange County Register" (L.A. Times). Comments like that have been dredged up by Dodger supporters to demonstrate Drew's supposed hypocrisy. But I have no doubt that Drew meant such words when he said them.

    "Let's have lunch—I'll call you!" is heard a lot here in L.A. But nine times out of ten, said lunch is not had. "Let's do lunch" is code for "Nice seeing you" just as "You make your commitments and you stick to them" is code for "I enjoy playing here." Period.

  • BORAS: Evil? Maybe. Smart? Yes. You don't convince someone to abandon $33 million if you're not certain you can get them more.

  • GAGNE: "[Boras] said Drew simply made a business decision to exercise a contractual right, much as the Dodgers made their decision not to exercise their $12-million option on injured closer Eric Gagne" (L.A. Times). True, but the Dodgers ended up paying Gagne $19 million for 9 saves; the player was overpaid and the organization walked away from that. The Dodgers paid Drew $22 million for 218 games; again the player was overpaid but this time the player walks away from that? Not a parallel comparison.

  • NEDDY: Jon Weisman at Dodger Thoughts makes this canny observation: "...if Paul DePodesta had been caught off guard by Drew's departure in the exact, exact same fashion as Ned Colletti was, however innocently, however insignificantly, with that month going by without a phone call, we would be hearing all about how rotten a communicator DePodesta was....But I expect Colletti will be let off the hook - which is fine, just different."

    Why? I think Ned will be "let off the hook" because in one set of quotes he showed more emotion—embarrassment, frustration, a little vindictiveness—than did DePodesta in his entire Dodger tenure. What Dodger fan can't identify with those feelings when something like this happens? (Besides Bill Plaschke, that is.)

3 comments:

Lasorda said...

Actually, DePo got roasted back when he drafted Lady Drew's contract which contained that opt-out clause. Now, it looks like the Dodgers have the opportunity to let someone else sign Lady Drew's checks and kiss his boo-boos. Maybe Lady Drew just wants to join his little brother in Arizona?

Orel said...

"So you want to play right field for the Diamondbacks? Are you a disgruntled former Dodger? Okay, suit up."

Steve Sax said...

We can change the caption on the Diamondbacks' new uniform picture (earlier in the blog) to read "I got one Drew to the left of me, and one Drew to the right of me. I'm surrounded by injuries."