M’s should bring Griffey Jr. back
Posted: Friday, February 13, 2009 2:57 PM
The Mariners are talking about a second marriage with free agent Ken Griffey Jr. in a nostalgia-based scenario. While Griffey said Thursday he really doesn’t know what he’s doing this season, his agent Brian Goldberg, acknowledged there are ongoing discussions with Seattle. A one-year, incentive-laden deal could be finalized soon.
Any potential baseball value to a Griffey-Mariners reunion can be answered in the following stat: In 131 at-bats with the White Sox last season, Griffey had only 13 extra-base hits, and just three homers. He turned 39 in November, and overall last season he hit .249 with 18 homers and 71 runs batted in for the Reds and White Sox.
The pop in Griffey’s bat is gone say the scouts, a normal evolution for most players. Compare these age 38 seasons: Griffey .249 batting average, 18 home runs and 71 runs batted in, and Barry Bonds .362 batting average, 45 home runs and 101 runs batted in during the season in which he turned 39. Do these numbers provide any clarity about the BALCO era?
Word travels fast in baseball and the lack of interest in Griffey has been notable. Griffey played the prime years of his career in Seattle, and for the Mariners bringing him back would be a good move. Losing Raul Ibanez cost them a potent left-handed bat, thus they hope Griffey can act as a partial replacement. As they continue their makeover, the Mariners fight to retain a tremendous fan base built over the last decade, the origins of which were directly tied to the blossoming of a superstar named Ken Griffey Jr.
Yes, this is Griffey as a windshield, blocking the unpleasant elements ahead as Seattle rebuilds. But it’s a no-harm move for both sides, allowing Griffey to end his career as so many superstars hope to do, where it began.
The biggest on-the-field news of recent days is the signing of Bobby Abreu by the Angels. In the late scramble of teams with needs to fill, Washington added power in Adam Dunn, and the Brewers a needed starter in Braden Looper.
But how did the Angels acquire as accomplished a player as Abreu at minimal cost? And is there any rational explanation for Dunn, a career .247 hitter who Arizona had no interest in retaining, signing a two-year, $20 million deal while Abreu, whose numbers have declined slightly, but who still posted a .296 batting average with 20 home runs and 100 runs batted in, could only land a modest one-year, $5 million contract?
FIVE MORE SWINGS:
1. BEST WORDS OF THE WEEK…came from John Smoltz, one of the game’s most thoughtful and decent people. While Alex Rodriguez was mainly praised for Monday’s mea culpa, Smoltz noted that the only confessions have come from those who have been busted.
Smoltz is waiting for someone to step forward and admit to using performance enhancing drugs without a failed test or spurned clubhouse pal as the cause of such an admission. I worry that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig’s initial responses to A-Rod owning up -- suggesting that he might suspend A-Rod or restore Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home run king -- only serve to dissuade honesty.
What I hope the commissioner will say is that it is good that the truth continues to emerge. It may be slow, it will be painful, but it’s best that we all know. That is why the Mitchell Report was commissioned. We know that was only the beginning in uncovering unpleasant truths. Those involved will live forever with the consequences of their actions. But we are completely committed to and recognize our duty to make sure, as best we can, that the game is clean going forward.
2. COLLUSION? A bad week for Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the MLB Players Association, who was alleged, for the second time, to have provided players advance warning of drug tests. I am not a lawyer, but does this sound like conspiring to circumvent a collectively bargained agreement? Does it sound like a different kind of collusion?
Orza denies the allegations, but as a serious student of baseball history and trivia that he is portrayed to by friends and colleagues, he certainly knows that the owners denied collusion in the late 1980s, which was ultimately proven true. And another collusion discussion: I know that collusion protects workers (read players) from unfair negotiating practices. Those who hire cannot collude but those who are hired, in the case of baseball players, do so openly. The Major League Baseball Players Association can and does work directly with agents. Their goal is to “raise the bar” in arbitration, in essence establishing a new “minimum salary” for those with two-plus years of service time in the majors. So it’s no surprise that in this year’s arbitration, nine of the 15 player filings requested salaries between $3.6 and $3.95 million.
Last point on collusion: I heard a conversation on ESPN in which a baseball voice, playing the role of a Scott Boras mouthpiece, injected the possibility of a collusion complaint into the Manny Ramirez negotiations. Mike Tirico, a voice of reason, thankfully recognized the transparent fear mongering and promptly slapped away the thought. Huge kudos to Tirico for displaying sanity in the face of absurdity.
3. MORE ON THE BAD WEEK…for the Major League Baseball Players Association as Gene Orza, chief operating officer of the players’ union, and Don Fehr, the players' union chief, had to read comments from their guru, former union chief Marvin Miller, who ripped the union for entering into any drug-testing agreement.
Miller was dismissive of the fact that many players -- the people who hire and pay union leadership -- wanted testing. His point is leadership must make decisions that aren’t always subject to a democratic vote. Most shocking was Miller’s outright dismissal of performance enhancing drugs as effective or potentially destructive.
I had the chance to lunch with Miller 15 years ago, an experience I treasure. The man deserves to be honored in the Hall of Fame. The sad conclusion from his latest comments is that a wildly intelligent man, who greatly advanced the cause of major league baseball players, sounded detached from reality.
4. GREAT PERSPECTIVE ON THE MIGUEL TEJADA CASE…(the PED fun ride never stops). This was a perjury case brought to conclusion by the Feds in D.C. unlike the Barry Bonds trial that will emanate out of San Francisco. Roger Clemens, whose perjury investigation is also based in D.C., might have taken note of what happened to Tejada.
5. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH…was provided, perhaps unintentionally, by the New York Times in its Alex Rodriguez coverage. The first sentence of a Feb. 10 sidebar story read, “One of the two anabolic steroids for which Alex Rodriguez tested positive, according to published reports, was Primobolan, a drug that is illegal to sell or market in the United States.”
Just that simple, the sale or possession of a steroid, without prescription, is against the law of the United States. Would apologists please stop with the defense that PED users were not breaking baseball’s rules? There is no provision in the collective bargaining agreement against car theft, breaking and entering, tax evasion or embezzlement. Crimes against society are covered by the judicial system.
