Is this guy on the juice again? I just don't see how a guy stops taking steroids in July of 2003, endures one-and-a-half seasons of being a complete crap player and now has re-emerged as the Yanks' version of David Ortiz (without the charm, guts, heart or flair for the dramatic). I invite you to look at Giambi's stats since the day he was approached about going down to the minors:
.316 AVG/9 2B/12 HR/32 RBI/.454 OBP
I don't know how this is happening but I'm truly amazed. I still don't like the guy (I never will) and I blame him for a lot of what the Yanks have become since 2001 but I am more than happy to take whatever output he can give us. We need his bat more than ever since the Yankee pitching staff is a collection of bums and the walking wounded.
PS – Only 35 minutes after I posted this. Giambi struck out with a man at third and one out. He pretty much shat away a chance at tying the game. Now THAT'S the Giambi I know and HATE.
PPS – This morning, the little lady and I got into a tiff about Giambi. While it is not Giambi’s fault that Scott Proctor, Buddy Groom and Tom Gordon pitched like crap or that Joe Torre mishandled the way he deployed the bullpen for the second game in three days, I still find fault with Giambi’s approach to his last at-bat in the ninth inning. With a man on third and one out, I want to see Giambi fight off pitches, make the pitcher work, try to bloop a base hit beyond the drawn-in infield or hit a sacrifice fly to bring the tying run home. What I don’t want to see is a long swing at a pitch out of the strike zone.
Of course, he did hit two solo homers during the course of the game and without those, it wouldn’t have been a one-run game that Giambi was batting in but a three-run game. I am happy to admit that Giambi did a good job in his two previous at-bats. But in a “close-and-late” situation, I want to see Giambi do more than swat homers and pretend that everything is now even with Yankee fans. I want him to do what Papi Ortiz does. I want him to make pitchers work and I want him to make pitchers scared. In the end, I think pitchers know that they can use Giambi’s desire at redemption against him and get him to lengthen his swing when he should be shortening it.
The little lady says I’m wrong, that I’m too hard on him, that Giambi’s got heart and that, as baseball is a team game, I can’t blame Giambi any more than I can blame the other culprits for the loss. She’s not wrong, in a way. But in a way she is, too. She doesn’t get it because she doesn’t know what it was like being a Yankee fan in the 80’s or early 90’s when we sucked and she doesn’t know what it was like after that when we didn’t. I’ve watched enough Yankee games to know that Giambi is more Balboni or Tartabull than he is Paulie or Donnie. For that reason, Giambi will never be welcomed, embraced, loved or respected by this blogger.
(Contributor’s note: This was originally posted at 11:58 pm on Thursday, July 21st. It was taken down this morning due to the tiff alluded to above in a misguided effort to stifle criticism and domestic disharmony and in a feeble attempt at censorship. It has been re-submitted as an apology to the here-unnamed but wildly popular contributor referred to above as “the little lady.” Hopefully she’ll accept my apology.)
.316 AVG/9 2B/12 HR/32 RBI/.454 OBP
I don't know how this is happening but I'm truly amazed. I still don't like the guy (I never will) and I blame him for a lot of what the Yanks have become since 2001 but I am more than happy to take whatever output he can give us. We need his bat more than ever since the Yankee pitching staff is a collection of bums and the walking wounded.
PS – Only 35 minutes after I posted this. Giambi struck out with a man at third and one out. He pretty much shat away a chance at tying the game. Now THAT'S the Giambi I know and HATE.
PPS – This morning, the little lady and I got into a tiff about Giambi. While it is not Giambi’s fault that Scott Proctor, Buddy Groom and Tom Gordon pitched like crap or that Joe Torre mishandled the way he deployed the bullpen for the second game in three days, I still find fault with Giambi’s approach to his last at-bat in the ninth inning. With a man on third and one out, I want to see Giambi fight off pitches, make the pitcher work, try to bloop a base hit beyond the drawn-in infield or hit a sacrifice fly to bring the tying run home. What I don’t want to see is a long swing at a pitch out of the strike zone.
Of course, he did hit two solo homers during the course of the game and without those, it wouldn’t have been a one-run game that Giambi was batting in but a three-run game. I am happy to admit that Giambi did a good job in his two previous at-bats. But in a “close-and-late” situation, I want to see Giambi do more than swat homers and pretend that everything is now even with Yankee fans. I want him to do what Papi Ortiz does. I want him to make pitchers work and I want him to make pitchers scared. In the end, I think pitchers know that they can use Giambi’s desire at redemption against him and get him to lengthen his swing when he should be shortening it.
The little lady says I’m wrong, that I’m too hard on him, that Giambi’s got heart and that, as baseball is a team game, I can’t blame Giambi any more than I can blame the other culprits for the loss. She’s not wrong, in a way. But in a way she is, too. She doesn’t get it because she doesn’t know what it was like being a Yankee fan in the 80’s or early 90’s when we sucked and she doesn’t know what it was like after that when we didn’t. I’ve watched enough Yankee games to know that Giambi is more Balboni or Tartabull than he is Paulie or Donnie. For that reason, Giambi will never be welcomed, embraced, loved or respected by this blogger.
(Contributor’s note: This was originally posted at 11:58 pm on Thursday, July 21st. It was taken down this morning due to the tiff alluded to above in a misguided effort to stifle criticism and domestic disharmony and in a feeble attempt at censorship. It has been re-submitted as an apology to the here-unnamed but wildly popular contributor referred to above as “the little lady.” Hopefully she’ll accept my apology.)
3 comments:
I am sorry but anybody that comes up with the excuse of having a "parasite" to explain why he lost so much weight due to the lack of steroid injection does not deserve any respect in my book. Why can't he be like Barry Bonds and blame it on the media and an infection???
All I can say to that is maybe you're right, maybe he does have heart. He didn't before. Maybe it's taken all of this stuff he's had to go through for some of that heart to come through. It doesn't change my opinion of him, however. I will always blame him, Cashman and Steibrenner in equal measure for changing the dynamic of the Yanks from a patient at the plate/aggressive on the basepaths team into a homer-happy one that forgot the virtues of the national league style of play that Torre brought to the Yanks from 1996-2001. In my eyes, he'll always be that bloated face on subway billboards saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." In my eyes, he'll always be the guy who wasted our time and our money. In my eyes, he's the representation of what's wrong with these Yanks and, whether that's fair or not, doesn't matter. I hated it when they signed him and I'll hate him for eternity. He doesn't deserve Yankee love, he deserves nothing but hate.
I'm probably not making any sense here and it might appear that you've bested me in this conversation but all I can tell you is that you never SAW those Yanks and you never SAW the change. It's something only some of us can understand, Buster Olney's book notwithstanding. I wish he'd stayed in Oakland where he belonged.
First, I get a kick out of the online relationship as supplement to the real one. You two are adorable!
Second, in response to the somewhat-rhetorical question that opened this post, I'll paraphrase my good and wise friend Lassie, who I can complement here because I know he almost never reads this thing: "If steroids made you like Barry Bonds, then everyone would hit 70 home runs." Giambi didn't learn to play baseball after he started juicing. There's a lot of talent in that now-smaller body of his. Maybe not enough to win MVPs and hit 40 home runs, but enough to have an impact as he's doing now. It shouldn't be TOO surprising.
Third, what we're really discussing here is what Mo said in the most recent comment. Giambi represents the "downfall" of the Yankees. The Yanks of the mid- to late-90s were built more on their farm system and balanced, smart baseball than anything else, with free agents as a means of plugging holes. They weren't all that different from most teams. With the turn of the century, though, came the new philosophy of buying everything they could and hoping it worked. It didn't. Giambi and Mussina were arguably the first such "mistakes", and that's why long-time Yankees fans have so much trouble trusting these guys or rooting for them.
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