Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Godspeed, Beast Mode

The Trolley Dodger nailed it: Juan Pierre was "One of the most polarizing Dodgers since Gary Sheffield." Which doesn't quite make sense: Why would a hard-working fan-favorite who hits for average and steals bases be controversial?

Because you don't play baseball in a vacuum. You play baseball surrounded by teammates of varying abilities who get paid varying amounts of money. In Pierre's case, he shared an outfield with more talented players, two of whom got paid much, much less than he did.

The Juan Pierre trade is as close to a win-win situation you'll find in baseball transactions: Ned Colletti gets to undo his blunder of a contract, the Dodgers lose the albatross of an overpaid bench player and gain two pitching prospects, and the White Sox become the team where bad contracts go to die.

We at SoSG liked to give Beast Mode a hard time for his noodle arm and ultra-serious attitude. But the truth is the Dodgers just lost a solid player and a good citizen. And we couldn't be happier.

photo by Rhona Wise/EPA

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Juan Pierre: Gone
Andruw Jones: Gone
Jason Schmidt: Gone

This trade officially ends the first chapter of the Colleti era. He's made his share of mistakes (the contracts above) but now all the albatrosses (albatross? albatrossi? albatrosseseseses?) have been removed.

He's also made some nice moves, and been smart enough to keep the core intact. Not that this should be acceptable of any GM, but Ned seems to be getting better with experience. So now that all his bonehead moves from the past are behind him, we should now get to see how good Ned could be.

Nothing is holding him back....

.......wait, Frank and Jamie are getting divorced??? Aw, crap.