The Andruw Jones Problem

You all know the problem better than I can explain it. We signed a guy who was coming off a bad year and got a time discount though not a price one. It seems like the guy probably lied about his knee being jacked up, which meant he came to camp way overweight and sucked for the first half of his first year on the $18million contract. I think that basically means he legally ripped us off for $9million while hurting our team for playing him under his sorry circumstances. It also appears that while his leg is better, he's still out of shape and not ready to play ball at the major level. I know, not rocket science, so why do they keep playing him?

I was reading Matt Kemp's chat manuscript in which I learned that Kemp is buddies with Delwyn Young, and also that Kemp thinks we should all go easy on Andruw because he works so very hard. I get that, if your Kemp you are in a fraternity of professional ballplayers, not to mention that of the Los Angeles Dodgers. You don't criticize your fellow players. Kemp pointed to Jones' work ethic, but here's the thing, none of us are stupid. We can see with our eyes that Jones is overweight. We all see the divots in the outfield grass when he dives for balls. And the worst part is, he's screwing us over worse than Jason Schmidt, because at least Schmidt is giving his roster spot to more capable players.

Then there's Joe Torre. I'm not here to pretend to tell him his job. I'm guessing that while Joe is less inclined to take orders from the top than he was at his last job, common sense says you don't call your direct boss an idiot by sitting his newest superstar, even if he can't hit .200. Torre doesn't think the Dodgers can reach their goals without Jones' presence in the lineup. I'll be honest with you, neither do I. But after that knee stunt we owe Jones nothing. So here's what we do. We send Jones to AAA until he drops the weight and learns how to hit, because we CAN get to the playoffs without him, though we probably can't win. Jones comes back like he was, we're good. Jones doesn't, we're better off than we are now. But I don't think we can afford to let him continue to work it out at the big league level. Man this was supposed to be a Juan Pierre post.

BTW, I'm against a trade for a relief pitcher. I liked the idea of getting Maddux, but would be careful about trading a prospect within the division. It would be nice to have the professor working with our kid pitchers again.