Indians (FINALLY) Dump Jason Johnson
Money freaking Quote:
- Johnson made 14 starts. He allowed 108 hits and 51 earned runs in 77 innings. The opposition hit .341 against him.
It is even worse. Jason Johnson had an ERA of 9.13 for the month of May as he gave up 24 runs (23 earned) in 22.2 innings.
I understand that as a baseball organization that works to sign players every season to plug holes that some experiments work better than others. Sometimes you have an inkling that you can strike gold with a player who hasn’t done too much anywhere else.
Did the Indians really think they were going to catch “lightning in a bottle” with Jason Johnson? His best season from an ERA standpoint was 2003 with 4.18 runs per nine inning average. In his career he has given up 1,437 hits in just over 1,200 innings of work.
I supported the Indians in the off-season in not overspending for Kevin Millwood who had a great season with the Indians last year. I was also in support of the team in not bringing Scott Elarton back who pitched adequately for the Indians last year. Hell, I didn’t even bury them when they traded Coco Crisp and Arthur Rhodes for Andy Marte, Guillermo Mota and Jason Michaels. (By the way, a whole story on Guillermo Mota is in order.)
My only real complaint is that if you are going to try to get lucky with players, you need to be agile enough to dump the hell out of these experiments when they come to the conclusion that you might expect.
It is now June 21. The Indians are 6 games UNDER 500. They are 15 back in their division. It is true that they made an unbelievable comeback last year to miss the playoffs by a game, but just like you can’t expect every move you make to work out, you can’t expect to make up that much ground at some point every year.
deezo Said,
June 21, 2006 @ 9:25 am
I think JJ’s start skewed his value, he had a decent April which made everyone think he was always good, but had poor numbers because he played with the Tigers (when they sucked). In April he looked like a poormans Kevin Millwood and worth everybit of 3 Million, by mid may he looked like a poormans Eric Plunk (which is not a compliment). I think Shapiro was really hoping he’d string 2-3 good startss together so he could deal him for some prospects and unload his bloated salary. It definitley didn’t end up that way.
That book by Terry Pluto looks awesome…Now I gotta finish sportsguys book quicker to get to that one.
FilteringCraig Said,
June 21, 2006 @ 10:58 am
I already ordered mine. Should arrive soon. He has snippets of it available to read on Ohio.com.
Bill Said,
June 27, 2006 @ 9:06 pm
If a pitcher is a lefty, he has an automatic ticket to the bigs.