My observations

[AzKarl]

After seeing about 75 % of the games including one in person I have concluded that Brenly should reduce Womack and Williams to part time players. Counsell must start somewhere every day whether it is third, short, or second. Junior will come out of his funk. Brenly should also consider a platoon situation with Bautista and DeLucci. DD has proven he deserves playing time and Danny needs to get his head on straight. Baerga needs more playing time.

Williams is just flat out done in my opinion. The D-backs at some point in the season should approach him with a buyout proposal or just flat cut him if he won't go out with dignity and just retire. Watching him try to hit makes me feel sorry he is so pathetic. We now resort to being excited when he hits the ball hard whether it is at someone or foul.

Womack can't even execute a simple bunt and while a pitcher may have that excuse an everyday position player does not. His playing time should be determined by how many balls he hits on the ground versus how many he pops up. Failure for him to put the ball in play on the ground should result in being benched.

There should also be something done to promote greater patience in at bats. I recommend a player fine system like a kangaroo court where players making first pitch swing outs are fined some token amount that eventually goes to charity.


Thanks for the rant.

 

[BC867]

Twenty-plus years ago, John MacLeod drove Suns fans crazy as Head Coach, because of the time it took him to react to situations. Five or ten games.

Whereas the average Coaches took one game. And the great Coaches, within a game!

Bob Brenly appears to be in the mold of MacLeod. If he insists on giving Williams more playing time than Counsell, at least do it near the bottom of the batting order.

We know that Brenly and Williams played together, and that he is showing him favoritism. And apparently he bases his playing time on the size of Matty's contract . . . No, he didn't do that with Jay Bell last season. So it must just be favoritism.

But if we're stuck with Williams for the remainder of the season, at least react to the fact that he is not helping the D'backs batting in the heart of the order.

I know he is hard-up for a big bat behind Gonzo (it's up to Garagiola to provide that), but the weakest answer on the team is Williams.

 

[Moose Lady]

Wow, your tough AZKarl. A little more than a week ago Matty was the only one hitting on our team. Now that he's gone cold (like the rest of them were a little more than a week ago) all of a sudden he is persona non grata. How quickly everyone forgets. But I guess it always comes from the What Have You Done for Me Lately club. I just don't subscribe to that philosophy. Everyone gets hot and cold. Matty was hot for the first 3 weeks when everyone else was cold. If he continues like this until the AS break then you can yell & scream about him. But at least give him a chance. I realize he isn't playing anymore like he used to nor is he hitting like he used to, but this is his last year and he did help this team quite a bit when he came here.

 

[RLakin]

Originally posted by finleyfanatic
and he did help this team quite a bit when he came here.

Not in this century:

Diamondbacks record from 2000-2003 (three seasons plus this year):

Without Williams on active roster: 111-70 (.613)
With Williams: 170-153 (.526)

 

[Forrestham]

Karl you are preaching to the choir and I cannot agree with you more. Next year we will be rid of Womack and Williams. Williams is a lineup cancer. He clogs up the lineup. It is more amazing what Gonzo has dne with Williams hitting after him. If it continues Gonzo may never see another good pitch to hit. Brenly and the team made tough baseball decisions with Greg Swindell
Jay Bell. Both of them are class individuals but their best days of baseball were behing them. With Williams there seems to be a double standard and I get tired of Brenly, announcers (not as bad as previous years) and other fans on this board making excuses for his bad play and apoligizing for him. Bottom line we have both Cintron and Tracy in AAA hitting over .400 and deserve to be on the team much more than this over the hill dead weight. If he won't retire, the team should just cut their losses and cut him. It is nothing personal against Matt. It is just his play on the field.

On a positive note, it was nice to see Spivey swinging the bat well today and to see BK and Mantei pitch well. Both were the teams biggest questions but it looks like Kim can start and Mantei can close again

 

[Smolder]

it's funny. it's so early in the season, and i have this weird fan-instinct feeling that the dbacks have to play playoff baseball and show the yankees and the gnats that we belong. every little setback seems so big right now. imagine that our two horses are out for a while and we're behind by 9 games. quick, somebody get me a valium. thank goodness the offense has turned the corner. i just wish randy were healthy, that way schill's appendectomy wouldn't be such a disaster...i hope he gets better, btw, and not just because the team needs him...

 

[AzKarl]

Originally posted by finleyfanatic
Wow, your tough AZKarl. A little more than a week ago Matty was the only one hitting on our team. Now that he's gone cold (like the rest of them were a little more than a week ago) all of a sudden he is persona non grata. How quickly everyone forgets. But I guess it always comes from the What Have You Done for Me Lately club. I just don't subscribe to that philosophy. Everyone gets hot and cold. Matty was hot for the first 3 weeks when everyone else was cold. If he continues like this until the AS break then you can yell & scream about him. But at least give him a chance. I realize he isn't playing anymore like he used to nor is he hitting like he used to, but this is his last year and he did help this team quite a bit when he came here.

Finleyfanatic,

I'm not trying to abuse Matt. The fact is he was quote hot for about 3 games. It is so painfully obvious that he no longer has the bat speed to handle an inside fastball and he is notorious for lunging at /reaching for curveballs in the dirt in the lefthanders batters box.. I feel sorry for him but this is a business and if he can't step up his performance he should act like the professional that everyone says he is and do the honorable thing and retire. By the way I agree on your Brenly observations. He's way too slow making changes.

 

[RLakin]

Originally posted by AzKarl
Finleyfanatic,

I'm not trying to abuse Matt. The fact is he was quote hot for about 3 games. It is so painfully obvious that he no longer has the bat speed to handle an inside fastball and he is notorious for lunging at /reaching for curveballs in the dirt in the lefthanders batters box.. I feel sorry for him but this is a business and if he can't step up his performance he should act like the professional that everyone says he is and do the honorable thing and retire

Well said. I don't feel sorry for Williams, though. The guy has made a good living off of baseball and he helped put this organization on the map, who, in turn, gave him his first championship ring. Then, like McGwire and others, Williams should have have put personal milestones below team objectives and stepped aside. Instead, he seems to have come to terms w/ a disengenious reserve role considering his $14.5 million dollar salary last year and $10 million this year. And while many of his defenders will point out that it is not Williams fault for making such money, it is his for accepting a fee that is disproportionate to the type of role that he has on this team, especially one (as I said) that helped him obtain the ultimate among baseball goals. This "expensive medicority" status is exactly what McGwire seemed to avoid and there is little doubt that St. Louis would not have been able to afford Scott Rolen had he not stepped aside. Given all this, it struck me as ironic to hear Williams praise Rolen in last years playoffs when he said that Rolen was "the type of player that he would want his son to emulate." Without Matt, that goal might have more easily obtained considering that the D-Backs were on Rolen's wish list of potential trade suitors last year. Arizona, though, will never make such a trade w/ Williams (plus bloated salary) on board, which makes people like Karl very unhappy. Baseball realists not Williams haters view Mike Lowell, Scott Rolen, and Larry Walker as better alternatives to Williams and the parade of others that surround Luis Gonzalez in this lineup. Given all this, how can one not be disgusted by seeing a player like Williams struggle, take up a roster spot and impede the organization from becoming better. So it is not as much individual Williams hatred as it is disgust for the idea of bad baseball at a high cost. Teams like the Yankees can afford mistakes like this, but the D-Backs, sadly, cannot. Nobody here knows Matt Williams personally and they probably never will. All they know is that Arizona Diamondbacks would be a baseball team without him, as evidenced by that statistic that I laid out a few posts before.
So it seems to me that Karl's post (like many others about Williams) isn't as much negative as it is criticism to the very essence of "constructive."

 

[BC867]

Originally posted by Forrestham
Next year we will be rid of Womack and Williams.

Ironic! By losing two "W's", we'll be gaining alot more.

 

[DWKB]

Am I gonna have to keep a running total so some people can keep perspective here?

By Breakdown   AB   AVG  OBP  SLG  OPS 
vs. Left       19  .368 .409 .579 .988 
vs. Right      25  .080 .179 .080 .259

No c'mon. If you want to put blame on somebody, blame BB for every time he puts Williams in the lineup with a RHP on the mound.

The fact that we appearently have a .988 OPS hitter against LHP is not a useless fact. It also makes Williams not a useless player.

 

[Lefty]

Originally posted by RLakin
Not in this century:

Diamondbacks record from 2000-2003 (three seasons plus this year):

Without Williams on active roster: 111-70 (.613)
With Williams: 170-153 (.526)

With Matt Williams, a World Series championship. If it was not for Matt in game five of the playoffs against the Cardinals the Diamondbacks might not of won that series. Also, Matt's 3-run home run off Pettite in game two of the World Series was huge.

 

[Moose Lady]

Originally posted by Forrestham
Karl you are preaching to the choir and I cannot agree with you more. Next year we will be rid of Womack and Williams. Williams is a lineup cancer. He clogs up the lineup. With Williams there seems to be a double standard and I get tired of Brenly, announcers (not as bad as previous years) and other fans on this board making excuses for his bad play and apoligizing for him. Bottom line we have both Cintron and Tracy in AAA hitting over .400 and deserve to be on the team much more than this over the hill dead weight. If he won't retire, the team should just cut their losses and cut him. It is nothing personal against Matt. It is just his play on the field.

Sorry Forrestham but it is exactly your choice of words in the above i.e. "Williams is a lineup cancer". He's still a person, a human being and for the player he used to be he doesn't deserve to be called that. Besides the fact that he does have a contract. So tell me please, if you had a contract where you worked and your co-workers started complaining that you weren't doing your job, would you go to the boss and tell him that you will just quit rather than continuing to take the money that you signed for???? Think about this. What would your answer be????? If you need to blame someone then blame the organization for signing him at the price they did. But quit trying to put all the blame on Matty. He doesn't make out the lineup either. And he is still a very good defensive player. Why would you pay him and get nothing out of him? Oh, and BTW, since I'm talking about his defense, he just made a defensive play that most 3rd basemen wouldn't make.

 

[IndyDevil]

Originally posted by DWKB
No c'mon. If you want to put blame on somebody, blame BB for every time he puts Williams in the lineup with a RHP on the mound.

The fact that we appearently have a .988 OPS hitter against LHP is not a useless fact. It also makes Williams not a useless player.

I absolutely agree with DWKB that BB hurts the lineup everytime he starts Matty against a RHP; however, although Matty has diminished skills, and his best days are behind him, he still has a place on the D'Backs. Pinch-hitting, platooning, defensive specialist, it doesn't matter to me as long as we utilize Williams against LHP!!

 

[RLakin]

Originally posted by Zona90
With Matt Williams, a World Series championship. If it was not for Matt in game five of the playoffs against the Cardinals the Diamondbacks might not of won that series. Also, Matt's 3-run home run off Pettite in game two of the World Series was huge.

Hypotheticals that can never be answered. Nobody knows whether Arizona would have pulled out Game 5 without Matt Williams’ hit, nor can they say for certain that a Game 5 would have even been needed if someone else had stepped in for his 0-15 (leading up to the hit) slumping bat. Nobody even knows whether Arizona would have won 1-0 in World Series Game 2 without Williams’ 3 run (provided) cushion, nor if that HR would have been rendered any less meaningful had he delivered another one in the 3 games following when Matt left 13 runners stranded during three 1 run losses in the Bronx. You just can’t say.
Lets say I do except your hypothetical of no championship without Matt. Would you then except mine about there being no 2001 playoffs with him? Let me clarify. In 2001, the Diamondbacks finished 92-70, two games ahead of the 2nd place Giants at 90-72. During that season the team had a winning percentage of .550 with Williams on the active roster and .630 without him. Therefore, theoretically (or hypothetically) a 2001 D-Backs roster that included an everyday Matt Williams would have finished 89-73, good enough for 2nd place in the NL West and 4 games behind St. Louis (93-69) for the Wildcard.

 

[AZZenny]

This "expensive medicority" status is exactly what McGwire seemed to avoid and there is little doubt that St. Louis would not have been able to afford Scott Rolen had he not stepped aside. Given all this, it struck me as ironic to hear Williams praise Rolen in last years playoffs when he said that Rolen was "the type of player that he would want his son to emulate."

Yeah - he didn't say McGwire was the one to emulate, now did he?
He has a contract, OK - he's made a huge bundle in baseball, but the man has no insight - most players don't, the competitive ego makes no room for it - which is what made Big Mac so rare. Look at Stottlemyre last summer - he was cooked and everyone else(almost) knew it, but he was absolutely enraged not to be brought into the starting rotation - until one more injury finally made him face the fact that his body had quit, even if his ego and self-concept weren't ready to do so.

BB is wrong to believe Matty still has the reaction time of a younger guy buried in there somewhere - and it keeps feeding Matty's unrealistic self-appraisal. Hmmm...Folie a deux.

 

[RLakin]

Originally posted by AZZenny
This "expensive medicority" status is exactly what McGwire seemed to avoid and there is little doubt that St. Louis would not have been able to afford Scott Rolen had he not stepped aside. Given all this, it struck me as ironic to hear Williams praise Rolen in last years playoffs when he said that Rolen was "the type of player that he would want his son to emulate."

Yeah - he didn't say McGwire was the one to emulate, now did he?

Read the next sentence.

 

[Forrestham]

Originally posted by finleyfanatic
Sorry Forrestham but it is exactly your choice of words in the above i.e. "Williams is a lineup cancer". He's still a person, a human being and for the player he used to be he doesn't deserve to be called that. Besides the fact that he does have a contract. So tell me please, if you had a contract where you worked and your co-workers started complaining that you weren't doing your job, would you go to the boss and tell him that you will just quit rather than continuing to take the money that you signed for???? Think about this. What would your answer be????? If you need to blame someone then blame the organization for signing him at the price they did. But quit trying to put all the blame on Matty. He doesn't make out the lineup either. And he is still a very good defensive player. Why would you pay him and get nothing out of him? Oh, and BTW, since I'm talking about his defense, he just made a defensive play that most 3rd basemen wouldn't make.

Finleyfanatic I can tell by your posts that you are a passionate Dbacks fan and the team needs more fans like yourself. However we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Matt is making 10 mil a year which is a large salary on a team with a limted budget when you have an unproductive player. 10 mil a year does not justify being paid to a player as unproductive as he is even if he makes some good defensive plays. We could really use LArry Walker Rolen, Colbrunn etc with this teams problems scoring runs. Because they could not unload his contract it was not possible to get a big time hitter to replace his salary. Yes I could have called him something else. How is "unproductive player". My comments about Matt are nothing personal and my criticism is only as a ballplayer and not as a person and you should not take them that way.

 

[Moose Lady]

Originally posted by Forrestham
Finleyfanatic I can tell by your posts that you are a passionate Dbacks fan and the team needs more fans like yourself. However we will have to agree to disagree on this subject. Matt is making 10 mil a year which is a large salary on a team with a limted budget when you have an unproductive player. 10 mil a year does not justify being paid to a player as unproductive as he is even if he makes some good defensive plays. We could really use LArry Walker Rolen, Colbrunn etc with this teams problems scoring runs. Because they could not unload his contract it was not possible to get a big time hitter to replace his salary. Yes I could have called him something else. How is "unproductive player". My comments about Matt are nothing personal and my criticism is only as a ballplayer and not as a person and you should not take them that way.

I'm sorry, I just get upset to hear any of our guys referred to as a "cancer" or worse. I know what your saying and I guess I feel sorry for them when they get past their prime but still want to play and feel like they are contributing something. That has to be one of the hardest for someone to do. Admit they can't do it anymore and retire. Todd did that last year even after me praying to everything and anything to let him pitch just one more year. Matty is a very nice man but I know that isn't enough to keep him on the team. It's just sad when you have to watch someone end their career. The one thing we really needed to do was to keep Colby. And I've seen alot of our kids so I know we'll be getting some good replacements for our veterans. Yes, your right. I am very passionate about this team and it's players.