“What’s Juan so upset about?” asked The Fanhouse’s Eamonn Brennan earlier this week. “It’s not as if Torre’s benched him for the beginning of the season”. Not so fast, buddy, that might be exactly what the soothing Green Tea proponent has in mind. And who can blame him? From the LA Times’ Dylan Hernandez :
“If they want to go a different route,” Pierre said, “I can live with it and I have to understand it but it’s something I don’t get.”
Pierre signed a five-year, $44-million contract a year ago to be the Dodgers’ starting center fielder, but was moved to left field before the start of spring training this year to make room for newly signed Andruw Jones. Today, Pierre could be moved again, this time to the bench.
“It’s a tough situation that they put not only all of us in,” Pierre said, referring to the three outfielders, including Matt Kemp, who are competing for the two corner spots. “But me too, because you sign here for one thing, a five-year deal, and you put up the same numbers you put up every year, and it seems like it doesn’t hold any weight or anything.”
Last season, Pierre had a .293 average, 196 hits and 64 steals. He has had a rough spring, entering Saturday’s exhibition game at the Coliseum batting .173. Ethier had six home runs and a .361 average.
“It’s spring training,” Pierre said. “I bat .200, but then I get 200 hits and do my thing. I work what I need to work on. I bunt a lot. . . . [But] if they go out and put a lot of weight on spring training, then it’s justified for them to do whatever they want to do with me.”
Bob Timmerman published a lovely photograph from last night’s exhibition tilt at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and it’s nice to learn the event was probably about as much fun to follow from the cheap moderately priced seats as it was to watch on television. The Boston Herald’s Jeff Horrigan is amongst those who’d probably like nothing better than to give Frank McCourt a big hug for such a well-executed event.