Good news and bad news, yall.
Good news is that it seems as if Drayton really has turned over the reins to Ed Wade and has stopped dictating who will and who will not be signed, as there is no way under heaven that Brett Myers, a 240 pound man who felt perfectly comfortable punching his 120 lb wife in her FACE in the middle of a public street in front of multiple witnesses, could POSSIBLY be described as a “good guy.” Yes, I know that his wife refused to file charges – so do most women whose husbands feel perfectly comfortable hitting them in the face. And we are not talking about an argument, we are not talking about a he said/she said unwitnessed “alleged” event, neither. Witnesses took pics and videos – they were posted briefly, then taken down, don’t ask me why. If I still had a link, or if someone had sent me a pic of this, I would post it every time Myers appeared for the team.
To me, this is a clear signal that Drayton has not just stopped interfering with any sort of baseball management, but has stopped caring about the team, period. Remember, he’s the one who advertised the Astros as “The Good Guys” for years. Not so much any more. I know that a lot of fans have hoped that Drayton would sell the team, because they are hoping for George Steinbrenner, sort of like guys who are hoping that if they ditch their fat ugly wife/girlfriend, they will then be able to date Megan Fox (substitute hot woman of your dreams if it ain’t Megan) only to find that the only females who will go near them are even older, uglier, fatter and more demanding and unpleasant women. If Drayton is going to continue to fill the team with wife beaters, or adds other kinds of no-goods like drunk drivers (no, not near as bad as wife beaters) then I’m going to join up with those fans.
I heard tell that Fast Eddie was chasing HARD after Myers at the Winter Meetings; I had a bad BAD feeling that Myers might could be signed in spite of the fact that Drayton supposedly wanted to cut payroll from 107 mill to 90 mill because Ed Wade is obviously obsessed with signing every ex-Phillie who is no longer good enough to play on that team and is unwanted by them. I had an even worse feeling when I found out that all the rumors I had heard about Drayton wanting to sell the team after he became the laughingstock of MLB after the Ike debacle were true. And Drayton obviously doesn’t care any more about the reputation of the team or the men who play on it.
Anything GOOD about this deal? Besides the fact that it might could stop Fast Eddie from signing someone worse to a longer contract for even MORE money?
Well, might could be that seeing as how Myers has had closing experience, he might could be used in that role if Lindstrom fails and if Lyons fails as he did so often in the past.
Good news is that he might could push Moehler into long relief.
And that is just about it.
Bad news is that we have a really lousy human being on our team. And yes, a huge powerful adult male who thinks nothing of deliberately hitting an unarmed, helpless female less than half his size in her FACE, is, to put it mildly, a really bad person. I don’t care if the wife “provoked” him, I don’t care if she “forgave” him, I don’t even care if she is someone who gets sexually excited by being hit, and yes, there really are people like that. There has to be something wrong with your “makeup” to deliberately hit a small, defenseless person.
Even if Mrs. Myers had been a 6’4″ 240 lb woman, she would STILL be at a significant physical disadvantage, based on the fact that even at the same height and weight, an adult male has significantly larger and stronger upper body musculature and no female could possibly hope to so much as fight him to a draw. There is a reason you never see boxing matches between males and females the same height and weight and the reason is that there is no contest whatsoever.
I am not just saying this because Myers is not a particularly good pitcher; I would be saying this if Myers was the best pitcher in the majors and had been for 3 years, had never had surgery and we got him for the next 10 years for free. Every 5th day, this despicable person is going to take the mound for MY team, the team I have rooted for since I was old enough to remember, and I am going to hope and pray that he does SO terribly that he is released, even if it means that MY team loses every 5th day or every time he appears on the mound in relief. Even if it means my team finishes last in the NL. Even if it means my team beats the 61 Mets for the worst record posted by any ML team since 1900. And I have never, ever felt that way about ANY player on MY team before.
sigh
No, I don’t expect ballplayers to be plaster saints or “role models”; I can root for a player on my team who is guilty of many deadly sins. Say, gluttony (Clank) or sloth (um, moren a few guys there) or vanity (all of em, most likely) or lust (wouldn’t be surprised if there was plenty of that) or avarice (grinning – who among them could not cast THAT stone) or envy (all of em, no doubt) and even drunkenness/drugs/steroids. But I draw the line at murder, rape, child abuse and wife beating.
sigh
At least this dirtbag is only signed for 1 year at 5 mill – I can’t find anything about an option.
amusement
You’d think that Ed Wade would have second thoughts about signing a very large violent man after his experience with Shawn Chacon, but maybe he’s convinced himself that Myers only enjoys hitting small defenseless females, not small not as defenseless males.
I would guess that this means that the Astros have decided that Wilton Lopez, Yorman Bazardo, Wesley Wright and Felipe Paulino are not going to be adequate as even 5th men. I HOPE it doesn’t mean that they have given up on Norris. A reporter for the Chronicle named Bernardo Fallas claims that that Myers is going to compete with Wandy for the #2 spot. Right. Myers has never had ONE year in which he has done as well as Wandy in 2009 and has not pitched as well as Wandy did in 08 since 2006. (This is what happens when you have the soccer reporter write a baseball post. People complain about Richard Justice, but he is a VERY good baseball man and wouldn’t make a dumb remark like that…)
sigh
I supposed I had better get to talking about Myers’ career and stats, seeing as how he’s gonna be on this team unless he gets released or until the year is over.
The Phillies signed Brett Myers out of high school in the first round of the 99 draft. He came up in the middle of the 2002 season, started 12 games and had a 1.46 WHIP and a 4.52 ERA. He was kept in the rotation for all of 03 and 04, and his best year by FAR was 05, in which he started 34 games, had a 3.72 ERA (120 ERA+) and a 1.21 WHIP, 8.1 H/9, 2.8 BB/9 and 8.6 K/9.
He was the Phils best starter in 06 as well, throwing 31 games with a 3.91 ERA and a 1.30 WHIP. At the end of the year, Billy Wags was a FA and signed with the4 Mets, so the Phils decided to make their best starter into a closer because they had too many other starters – namely Cole Hamels, Jamie Moyer, Jon Lieber, Kyle Kendrick, Adam Eaton and Kyle Lohse.
And mind, this was a year in which JD Durbin got 18 starts and they traded FOR Freddie Garcia, who got 10 more.
Ed Wade.
As a closer, Myers had 3 starts (1 good, 2 horrible) had 48 relief appearances, finished 37 games, had 21 saves, 3 BS plus 5 losses with an ERA of 2.87, WHIP 1.20, 10.8 K/9 and 3.05 BB/9 IP.
Myers was put back in the rotation in 08, threw 30 games over 190 innings, had a 4.55 ERA (96 ERA+) and a 1.38 WHIP with 9.4 H/9, 3.1 BB/9 and 6.4 K/9. I should note that he had a GREAT deal of difficulty readjusting to the rotation and was sent down after 17 starts (June 23) when his ERA reached 5.84. He spent 4 weeks in the minors and got his head and motion straightened out, then returned, gave up 3 ER in 5 IP, then threw 8 straight QS, and 9 of 10 QS, including 2 CG and finished the year with 2 stinkers. He threw 2 excellent games – 7 IP giving up 1 and 2 runs in the playoffs, and one stinker, 5 ER/5 IP, which the Phils won anyway.
He was injured most of last year – started 10 games, then was put on the DL in May and didn’t return until September, and made 8 relief appearances over 7 IP with a 6.43 ERA.
Assuming he has recovered from his hip surgery, ZIPS projects him to have an ERA+ of 98 (of course, that was still when he was listed as a Phillie, and will have to be adjusted for the Astros park. He averaged 1.4 HR/9 IP, but then again, he pitched half his games at Philly, which is more than a bit of a home run park.
He isn’t a #2 starter any more than I am, but IF he has recovered, I would guess he would be the #3 unless Bud Norris, who has better stuff, significantly outpitches him in Spring Training.
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB
I agree completely, even though I think drunk driving is every bit as bad as spousal abuse. I know I’m probably in the minority on that one, but I equate someone impairing their judgment and reflexes with a foreign substance and then getting into a huge, fast-moving piece of metal and glass to roughly the same thing as waving a loaded weapon at a crowd of innocent people. Drunk drivers kill thousands of people a year. To me, that’s just as bad as spousal abuse.
Yeah, this signing… It’s fine on a pure baseball level (as long as it kicks Moehler out of the rotation and not Paulino) but on a moral level… Apparently the organization only cares about wife beating if it makes bad press for them, it’s okay if it’s a few years past and swept under the rug.
Reading some of the eyewitness accounts made me want to take a baseball bat to Myers’ pitching arm, until I cooled off a little.
Nevertheless. I hold enough faith in people to believe that they can change. We know Myers and his wife sought counseling. Maybe Drayton and Ed sat down with Myers and asked him some really tough questions and were satisfied with his answers.
Do I really believe that, no, but I don’t know for certain that it wasn’t addressed either. I’m more inclined to agree with your interpretation. Regardless, I don’t see the purpose of signing a guy with Myers’ history with so many other guys who profile similar on the market. Even if you have to pay another million dollars to get Duchscherer’s depression over Myers’ history of abuse, yeah, that’s worth it.
I think we all know why, it’s because Wade drafted Myers and he’s one of Wade’s pet projects.
austin
i think you know how i feel about drunk driving.
the only reason it is LESS awful than beating up your wife/kids is that it is possible to drive drunk and harm no one. itp is NOT possible to beat up your wife and hurt no one.
christian
we all know that wade has a fetish for ex-Phils. but once upon a time, drayton wouldn’t NEVAH have let his GM sign a person like myers, and wouldn’t have “sat down with” him
as for counseling,
well, from what i’ve seen, it is something men do to avoid prison
has myers TRULY repented and cast out the evil from his heart? only God knows the truth. but from what i have seen, i seriously doubt it. mean and violent people very seldom change except to become even MORE mean and violent.
I did try to honestly evaluate myers as a PITCHER as well as a human. i just absolutely REFUSE to root for him under any circumstances.
as for duchscherer,
depression is a different kind of problem. the guy doesn’t get off on injuring OTHER people, or even himself. and unlike men who get off on hurting smaller helpless people, depression is something that actually CAN be medically trreated. I think duke WANTED to stay with the organization which helped him out. i doubt it was the Organization itself that made him depressed, or he wouldn’t have stayed.
i don’t know how drayton felt about it. we had a first rounder – a hs guy named derik grigsby who suffered from depression and left pro baseball within a year. not sure if/what the Organization did for him. and i know that there are too many people who look at young, should be successful men who get depression as pu**ies. and i wouldn’t be surprised if, in the pre-Greinke days, the astros didn’t do a thing for grigsby.
and as for present day astros Organization,
after the tejada signing, it was clear that they were going to go the – sweep under the rug – way. there is absolutely NO way i can be convinced that a baseball executive had NOOOOOOOOOOO idea that tejada, a person who had had all kinds of rumors floating around about him being a roider, was gonna be on the mitchell report. (and i have looked and looked and i still can’t find any Organization that the Astros were bidding against.) they had a bunch of young players they wanted to get rid of, drayton had wanted tejada since the home run derby in 04, and ed wade knew that the astros fans wouldn’t care about steroids, just batting average. he was right on THAT one.
I doubt it too (that he has changed) and I agree that counseling was probably just Myers worming out of worse trouble. But I like to have a little faith that it’s possible to change and allow a little room for redemption. Else I have to conclude people are just puppets or machines with no free will and I don’t like what follows from that conclusion.
Anyway this is getting a little too philosophical. My point is, if I knew that the Astros had asked him some tough questions about it and such, and they truly believed he had changed, I could at least understand signing Myers even if I didn’t agree with it. But we have no evidence that they even care so I have to agree with your obvious conclusion.
Your paragraph on the seven deadly sins is hysterical while being serious.
Bottom line: this is a signing akin to the 2008 signings of the previously okay but now injured/washed up/whatever mediocre pitchers (see Hampton, Mike). The difference is that there is proof this guy did what Lugo was accused of. It was enough to get Lugo run off the team and out of town, yet we’ll now pay $5M on an injured pitcher who is being brought in to eat up innings and make the team credible without being competitive. It doesn’t do anything for me. I’m not paying to see the games in 2010. Period.
Let’s be fair, on a baseball level this is better than Hampton/Ortiz. Myers is actually under the age of 30 (gasp!) and actually posted ace numbers 2005-2007.
Myers is an equal opportunity abuser. Read this thrilling account of how he called a reporter a “$#%*!& retard” after a game. (look out for explicit language.)
One interesting aspect of this deal is if BM does actually knock out the Cockroach (not to be referred to as BM) from the rotation, you’ve got a dead-to-rights wife-beater winning over the winner of the Darryl Kile Astros Good Guy Award, having exemplified the highest level of decency and character on the 2009 team..
p.s. Maybe we got Myers just so he can be flipped. (j/k)
i can’t remember us having someone as rotten as myers on our team since i was a small grrrl – the guy who SHOT his wife was before my time
but i sure do wonder how the other guys feel about having a wifebeater on the team
might as well get rid of the darryl kile award, seeing as how the astros apparently don’t give a rat’s ass about character any more
Thanks for that, Wags. I’d totally forgotten about that outburst. And I love that reporter’s response. That was hilarious. “How do you spell ‘retard?’” lol…love it. That really was classy by Myers. What else can you say?
I also like looking back at old news stories and blog posts and seeing things like “some guy named Kevin Kousmanoff.” He’s a well-known player know, and the prospect at the time would now be called “some guy named Terrmel Sledge.”
alongs with the 7 deadly sinnahs, i can handle ballplayers who are stupid. i can handle ballplayers who are rude. i can handle un-classy ballplayers – all of em as long as they don’t cause problems for the rest of the team.
but youse GOTS to draw lines and hitting women is the line right THERE
Unfortunately with most athletes there isn’t a permanent line unless it involves a violation directly related to the actual game. All they have to do is look shameful, say sorry, and carry on with life. If Wade pissed off Chacon to the point of choking, I’m somewhat interested in seeing what Myers will do to him.
Wow, that’s an impressive interview! Sounds like on top of wifebeating, there’s some ‘roid rage goin’ on. I’m proud to have such a fine individual on the team I used to root for. I’m with Lisa — I’m hoping he has an ERA over 6 and gets canned.
I’m thinking a Myers unhappy with Wade would probably yell at him. On the other hand, Wade is somewhat small in stature, so Myers might figure he could deck him with little effort.
Kudos on the comment about depression – I’ve battled it for years and it is a serious problem, that with treatment and time can be treated. I have nothing but respect for a guy like Duscherer who has the balls to come out and deal with what is a serious illness.
As for Myers, he’s a scumbag with no respect for women at all, considering what he did. he may have gotten counseling but that doesn’t erase what he did. I hope he gets placed on waivers or released during next season.
I agree that Myers seems to be pretty much a despicable human being, and 100% reda$$, but I think its a fine line we walk when we try to play morality police with our teams and our favorite athletes. With a guy like Myers, it’s pretty black and white (as in, he’s clearly a scumbag), but where does one draw the line? Don’t you think there are and always were plenty of a-holes/bad fathers and husbands/criminals/bad human beings/etc. on Astros teams of the past that we cheered for? Did that bother us, or would it have if we’d known at the time?
Maybe I’ve just become to desensitized and cynical with athletes nowadays as compared to the thoughts I had as a kid/teenager that my favorite players were all “awesome” and that they were all good guys, but at this point, I really don’t care as much. I’d love to have all good guys on my team, but I know that can’t happen, and it wouldn’t shock me if all my favorite athletes were jerks (except for Lance, he better not be
I just try to keep a separation there between myself/the team I cheer for and want to win, and the players on that team who may or may not be complete scumbags. Makes it easier to not go crazy and break my heart when I inevitably find out that some of these “heroes” of my teams were really bad people. My two cents.
Speaking of Myers, this video is pretty awesome. Think I watched it 10 times already, and its still not old:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQucZg0YKfo
paul
i had heard more than a few stories from more than a few people about the way that pro athletes act when not on the ball field (strip clubs, hotels, restaurants) and how, uh, lousy a whole LOT of them acted
i SURE as heck don’t think they are role models and never did. and i don’t fall for all that “charity” stuff neither
but like i said,
i draw the line – “bad behaviour” line – at rape, murder, beating of children, women, dogs
and brett myers done crosst that there line