Khalil Greene Needs Protection From Khalil Greene

Usually when a team benches one of their players it's because he is doing the team harm. That's definitely the case with Khalil Greene in St. Louis. His OPS is .586 and he's done a poor job defensively as well, each of which is reason enough for the Cardinals to try out a new shortstop for the immediate future.

And that's what they're going to do. Tony La Russa told Greene that he'll move into a utility role for the immediate future, but his play is only part of the reason. The other part is the damage that Greene is doing to himself as a result of his struggles. It seems that Greene isn't able to leave his troubles in his locker at the end of the day.

Greene admitted to feeling increasingly overwhelmed by his situation and did not dispute accounts that he has several times punished himself physically.

Several team members have expressed concern about the degree of Greene's self-punishment.

"That's the way it's always been," Greene said, referring to his condition's compulsive nature. "It's not rational. It's not something I think as an intelligent thinking human being. ... I understand the disorder of it. It just doesn't help."

Greene has a history of allowing his on-field struggles to cause him bodily harm. Greene missed the last two months of the 2008 season after punching a trunk while with the Padres. It was easy to write that off as a petulant action a year ago, but now it looks like a warning sign of a player who is doing battle with demons that go well beyond the opposing pitcher.

Cards G.M. John Mozeliak told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the team had no inkling of Greene's issues before they traded for him this offseason. There aren't any plans to put him on the disabled list at this point even though, superficially, he seems to be a lot more troubled than Dontrelle Willis, who went on the DL with an anxiety disorder in spring training.

The lineup change is negligible for the Cardinals on the field. Neither Brendan Ryan nor Tyler Greene can do any worse than what they were already getting at shortstop. As for Khalil Greene, whatever direction the rest of his season takes, hopefully he'll find some way to stop hurting himself when things go in a bad direction at the ballpark.