Ken Rosenthal's column on FoxSports.com is usually a good place to find a juicy trade rumor or two. He'll throw in another couple of nuggets from his contacts around the league to round things out and he's very good at providing an insidery look at the game of baseball. He's not quite as good at the moralizing columnist thing, if his most recent work is any guide. Rosenthal takes Alex Rodriguez to task for choosing not to take part in the Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium tonight. He says he doesn't want to hear about the Derby messing up A-Rod's "precious" swing.
Yes, several recent Derby participants - Bobby Abreu, David Wright, Alex Rios - had their home-run production decline after they competed in the event. But those dropoffs might have occurred anyway. These are the best hitters in the game. They can't adjust?Now what's a more believable scenario, these are stupid, shiftless players who chose whining over making adjustments or that the Derby affects your swing? The idea that a player should risk a slump and hurting the team that pays his salary to take part in glorified batting practice is a ridiculous one. Rosenthal meant precious as a slight but at $275 million, it seems like a pretty appropriate word.
As is an employee of a company in bed with MLB ripping a player for not taking part in a MLB revenue grab. Rosenthal cites the fact that tickets to the Derby cost $150-$650 as part of his rationale for why A-Rod and other superstars should be participating. A sane person would ask why tickets to batting practice cost that much money., only a shill for MLB would look at it from the other direction.
Rodriguez is putting his team first, which any player should be doing. If you want to do a Home Run Derby, why not treat it like the Slam Dunk Contest in the NBA? Just have players like Ryan Howard and Jack Cust, all-or-nothing swingers who wouldn't be thrown in the slightest, take part regardless of All-Star status. If watching balls travel a long distance excites you, why does it matter who hits them?
