January 24, 2013

Diamondbacks Send Bad Soldier Away

This morning the Arizona Diamondbacks traded Justin Upton and Chris Johnson to Atlanta for Martin Prado, Randall Delgado, Nick Ahmed, Zeke Spurill, and Brandon Drury. When this trade was first announced I thought the Braves fleeced Arizona. Dave Cameron at Fangraphs though says this trade should work for both sides and since he knows more about baseball than I do I'll trust his judgement. Still though I don't like a team that trades a player under their control for a few years for a player with only one year of team control.

That's not what is really bothering me about this trade though. What really bothers is that Arizona traded Upton for being a "bad soldier". You have to know the back story to the Arizona situation.

Upton isn't the only player or broadcaster that has feuded with Arizona front office. Darron Sutton the Diamondbacks broadcaster was pulled from the TV broadcast last season because Sutton wasn't wearing one of their team issued shirts on the broadcast. Sutton wanted to look like a professional and wear a suit and the Diamondbacks sad no. That should tell you right away that the people in that front office are nuts.

Then you have the owner last season questioning when Stephen Drew would return. Basically he called him a "pussy" for not coming back from his ankle injury as fast as Posey despite the fact Posey got hurt a few months ahead of Drew. Sure enough the Diamondbacks traded Drew and have had a hole at shortstop ever since. And Cliff Pennington isn't going to fill it.

When the owner blasted Drew he also blasted Upton saying,"I think Justin is an enigma at this point," Kendrick told KGME. "I know he had an injury (thumb) early on and maybe a little bit of a nagging injury. But he's played. He's certainly not the Justin Upton that he has been in the past and that we would expect of him. He's 24 years old and it's time for him to be a consistent performer and right now this year he's not been that."

And with that the Diamondbacks did all they could to trade Upton. They tried to trade him at the trade deadline last season. They tried to trade him all this off season until today. The Diamondbacks traded Upton because they perceived him to be a "bad solider". It's why they dumped Drew and why they dumped Sutton.

That's just plain ridiculous to me. Seriously you're trading a young powerful outfielder because he's an "enigma"? Because he couldn't quite recover from an "nagging injury"? Guess what there are players who are "enigma's" and there are players who get "nagging injuries" that they can't quite recover from during the season. That doesn't mean you should trade him away.

Now that being said I couldn't be happier Arizona traded away Upton. That's 20 games of not going against a right-handed masher who can catch everything hit to him in the outfield. So congrats Arizona for trading away a young superstar!

1 comment:

  1. Any time you can send a young power hitting outfielder away for a third baseman under team control for 1 year, you gotta do it.

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