Let's take what I like to call a "look-see" (®©™ Fremulon, LLC, all rights reserved; the term "look-see" may not be used without written permission of Fremulon, LLC or its partners) and reserve our conclusions for the end...
JW (NH): Joe - man what a waste of $126M! Can Zito find his curveball working in the bullpen or is it harder to get consistent when you don't go every fifth day? Joe Morgan: Well every fifth day will not make you consistent.
Let me just pause here to say that one of the ways that we knew (and by "knew," I mean "wildly claimed") it wasn't Joe last week was: there was nary a "consistent" to be found. Count how many there are this week.
But the Giants do have to be worried about their investment. But many people saw this coming. (...)
Lot's of "but"s this week, already, too. Is this really Joe? Or an increasingly clever imposter?
Mike (Clearwater, FL): Hi Joe - Are the Rays for real? Can they really manage to stay near the top of the standings?
Joe Morgan: To say they can do it for the whole year is a bit hard to tell right now. So far they are doing eveyrthing right. But I feel like that ballpark will hurt them in the end, becasue it is so hard to be consistent there, where teams think they can score runs. You need a big home field advantage, and I do not think they have it. A lot of the fans, when they play the Yankees, for example, are New York fans. I think the mixture of fans there does not give them much of a home field advantage, which they need. But they do have talent and are playing very well together right now.
But...but...consistent...Yankees...nonsense. This smells like Joe. And yet, I can't quite bring myself to believe...
SprungOnSports (Long Island): You saw the Tigers and Angels last Sunday, what's your take on those two AL clubs who have not been playing to their potential as of late?
Joe Morgan: The Angels are playing up to their potential when you consider they have had injuries to their top two starting pitchers. The Tigers are just incosistent.
This is Fremp. I promise you. He's gotten better at his craft, but another "consistent," and a typo to boot? Gilding the lilly. Too perfect. Like the too-perfect English that Axis spies spoke when impersonating British businessmen.
They scored a lot of runs last week and are not scoring this week. The week before I saw them, they were on a hot streak. But it's easy to look good against Texas before you play the Angels. But I do think Detroit will play better as the season continues. And I thought Verlander played better and used his three pitches well. Again, as I have said before, it comes down to how Sheffield plays. He is their run producer and the difference maker. When he hits well, they'll do well.
More "but"s, and a Sheffield reference. I'm sorry. This is too stupid even for Joe. Not even Joe would call Gary Sheffield (.159/.321/.254) the "run producer" or "difference maker" on a team with Cabrera, Guillen, Ordonez, and Granderson. This is not Joe. This is the Wyatt Gwyon of Joe Morgan impersonators.
Kevin (STL): The Mets offense is not very consistent
Well done, Kevin.
right now....How much of that is due to Reyes struggles?
Joe Morgan: For some reason everyone wants to blame Reyes for everything that happens with the Mets. He is not even one of the top payed players on the team, and yet everything gets blamed on him, including last year's collapse.
...Well, he did hit .205/.279/.333 in September, unlike his buddy David Wright, who got blamed for the collapse way more (to the tune of: he lost the MVP because of it) despite the fact that Wright hit .352/.432/.602 with 6 HR in September. And I'm not sure what his salary has to do with anything, when you're just talking about on-field performance. This is such a weird response, I want to believe Fremp just took a break here and the real Joe sidled up to the keyboard for a moment...
They have Delgado, Beltran and Wright also playing for them. Now it does not help them that he has not been playing well at the top of the order. But there are other guys on this team besides Reyes, and the Mets need their veterans to step up.
Delgado may be done, but Beltran isn't playing that badly, and Wright has a .980 OPS this year. They do need Reyes to play way better. I think we can all agree on that. Can't we....Fremp?!
Dave (Chicago): Do you think Sheffield can make it back from his shoulder problems or is this the end of the line?
Joe Morgan: That is a big question with a veteran player. I had this conversation about Frank Thomas last year, when he got off to a slow start, but look what he ended up doing last year. When you are a young guy and this happens, you're in a slump, but when you are a vet it becomes an "end of the line" issue, and that's just the nature of the game. But Gary told me he is getting closer. We'll just have to see.
When did Gary Sheffield talk to Bill Fremp? I would've loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.
Tom (NY): Despite all the problems in Yankee-land, we are only 1 game out of first...surprised?
Joe Morgan: No I am not surprised; Boston has struggled of late and have kept the Yankees in it. You need to have Kennedy and Hughes win some game for you though. But looking at their potential they are capable of doing that. But I am not too surprised.
Now this...this seems like Joe. Rambling, semi-coherent sentence fragments. A completely inappropriate semi-colon after the first sentence. Ends exactly the same as it begins, rendering the middle meaningless. I'm going to be optimistic and say that right before this answer, Joe decided he'd had enough of Bill Fremp (Edgewood, KY) and fired him. Got back in the saddle. Pulled a Pat Riley and took day-to-day control of the team. Time will tell.
Joe Morgan: That's all the time I have! Talk to you next week!
Looking forward to it. (ominously) Whoever you are.
Labels: bill fremp, gary sheffield, joe morgan, joechat, wyatt gwyon
