{"id":356,"date":"2009-08-12T16:41:59","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T20:41:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=356"},"modified":"2009-08-12T16:42:23","modified_gmt":"2009-08-12T20:42:23","slug":"theres-no-crying-in-baseball-jamie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/?p=356","title":{"rendered":"There’s No Crying in Baseball, Jamie"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"moyer\"Jamie Moyer has always seemed like a classy, selfless ball player, but it looks like his true colors came out when he went to the press yesterday to complain about his demotion to the bullpen.<\/a>\u00a0 I won’t condemn a pitcher for saying they want to be a starter.\u00a0 If Moyer had just said, “I want to be a starter, but I’m a team player and I do what I’m told,” that would have been fine.\u00a0 But he went way past that in his statements yesterday, and there are a number of them that were clearly out of line and counter-productive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First of all, Moyer claims that he was “misled” by the Phillies because when he was signed, Ruben Amaro “kind of parlayed” to him that “this type of situation would not happen”.\u00a0 Now, if you’re going to come out\u00a0and insinuate that someone is a liar, which is what he’s doing here, then you better have some more specific evidence than he “kind of parlayed” it to you.\u00a0 I believe that Amaro told him when he signed that the Phillies had every intention of using him as a starter for the duration of the contract.\u00a0 Do I believe that Amaro said, “No matter what, no matter how bad you pitch, we will keep you in the rotation”?\u00a0 No, I don’t believe he said that.\u00a0 This is professional sports and if you don’t perform there are consequences.\u00a0 Even if, as Jamie pointed out, you’ve “been in this game long enough that the respect factor should be there”.\u00a0 I think the “respect factor” is there, but that doesn’t mean the team stops trying to win.<\/p>\n

Another big problem I have with Moyer’s comments is that it suggests to me that his number one priority is being a starting pitcher, not being on a winning team.\u00a0 Was he disappointed when the team traded for Cliff Lee, a Cy Young winner in his prime?\u00a0 Was he disappointed when the team signed Pedro Martinez,\u00a0a future Hall-of-Famer who is NINE years younger than Moyer?\u00a0 Does he really think that he deserves the rotation spot over Happ?\u00a0 Or Blanton?\u00a0 Or Hamels?\u00a0 It’s hard to imagine what he thinks would be the better move for the team.\u00a0 And if his top priority was remaining a starter, maybe he should have signed with the Pirates.<\/p>\n

Finally, Jamie said repeatedly that he\u00a0“refuses to be a distraction.”\u00a0 Well, if there’s a list of How to Be a Distraction to Your Team, calling the front-office liars and whining about a demotion is probably right near the top of the list.\u00a0 In the end, hopefully he uses this as motivation and prepares himself to pitch well out of the pen and is ready to step back into the rotation if needed.<\/p>\n

Again, Pedro makes his debut tonight.\u00a0 It will be cool to see him in a Phillie uniform.\u00a0 When he was in his prime, he was probably the best pitcher I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 In 1999-2000 with the Red Sox, he went 41-10 with a 1.89 ERA, in the American League, in the thick of the Steroid Era!\u00a0 Of course, that was many years ago now.\u00a0 For whatever it’s worth, tonight will be the first time since Mike Schmidt retired that we will look at a player in a Phillies uniform and say, “That guy has had a Hall-of-Fame career.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jamie Moyer has always seemed like a classy, selfless ball player, but it looks like his true colors came out when he went to the press yesterday to complain about his demotion to the bullpen.\u00a0 I won’t condemn a pitcher … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[655,327,737,328,16,395],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-cliff-lee","tag-jamie-moyer","tag-mike-schmidt","tag-pedro-martinez","tag-phillies","tag-ruben-amaro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/broadstreetbelievers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}