Monday, March 29, 2004
Up-Chuck.
That's what I wanted to do when I read that the Tampa Bay Devil Rays gave General Manager Chuck "Yessir" LaMar yet another two-year contract extension.
The Rays have been MLB's worst team since their inception in 1998, and the only constant from Day One through the present, aside from owner Vince Naimoli, has been LaMar. And it's not just been a matter of things not working out. LaMar has made one bonehead decision after another, and in my book, he'll never live down setting the franchise back several pegs before the team ever took the field, when he traded Bobby Abreu to the Phillies for a washed-up (and never really that good in the first place) Kevin Stocker, and in the 1997 expansion draft took athlete Mike Kelly over actual hitter Dmitri Young (who hit 25 HR last year for a sorry team in Comerica Park while Kelly never amounted to anything). It stayed bad after that, with LaMar taking drug abuser Josh Hamilton over World Series hero Josh Beckett in the 1999 draft, and more moves that escape me at the moment (or perhaps have been repressed in my memory). He also hired Cam Bonifay as an assistant, the moron that lavished ridiculous contracts on the likes of Derek "Operation Shutdown" Bell and Pat Meares while with the Pirates.
LaMar has always been one of the old guard, obsessed with "tools", an obsession in this age of Moneyball that small-market teams with few resources can really afford. Plate discipline is not taught in the system, and even the few Rays prospects that have emerged as decent hitters (Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford) still swing at everything, a characteristic that doesn't bode well for long-term success.
The only theory I can plausibly come up with for the repeated extensions to LaMar's contract is that he must have pictures of Naimoli, or has Jedi-like control over his mind. Otherwise, I have to ask, where's the accountability, Vince?
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The Rays have been MLB's worst team since their inception in 1998, and the only constant from Day One through the present, aside from owner Vince Naimoli, has been LaMar. And it's not just been a matter of things not working out. LaMar has made one bonehead decision after another, and in my book, he'll never live down setting the franchise back several pegs before the team ever took the field, when he traded Bobby Abreu to the Phillies for a washed-up (and never really that good in the first place) Kevin Stocker, and in the 1997 expansion draft took athlete Mike Kelly over actual hitter Dmitri Young (who hit 25 HR last year for a sorry team in Comerica Park while Kelly never amounted to anything). It stayed bad after that, with LaMar taking drug abuser Josh Hamilton over World Series hero Josh Beckett in the 1999 draft, and more moves that escape me at the moment (or perhaps have been repressed in my memory). He also hired Cam Bonifay as an assistant, the moron that lavished ridiculous contracts on the likes of Derek "Operation Shutdown" Bell and Pat Meares while with the Pirates.
LaMar has always been one of the old guard, obsessed with "tools", an obsession in this age of Moneyball that small-market teams with few resources can really afford. Plate discipline is not taught in the system, and even the few Rays prospects that have emerged as decent hitters (Rocco Baldelli, Carl Crawford) still swing at everything, a characteristic that doesn't bode well for long-term success.
The only theory I can plausibly come up with for the repeated extensions to LaMar's contract is that he must have pictures of Naimoli, or has Jedi-like control over his mind. Otherwise, I have to ask, where's the accountability, Vince?
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