Lonely Tuesday Evenings

In order to cope with the onset of shakes and sweats due to a tuesday night without Laguna Beach, I am drying out myself (and probably my readers) with the latest Pedro talk:


"Pedro is very good, but I believe the word is, one of the Red Sox front office guys said, if they had the three-year $40.5 million contract with the 252 perks, said to me 'this contract is going to cause us more anxiety than anything, there's no way to get a penny of insurance... if you look at Pedro's baserunners per nine innings, hits per nine innings, strikeout to walk ratios, they've all gone south dramatically in the last five years, strikeouts per nine innings pitched too.' Those are indicators that the stuff is not there. He had a 5.00 ERA when he pitched in a normal rotation on four days rest. Tom Verducci admired what Pedro did in the post-season, pointing out that his three good starts were on 7-8-and-7 days rest. And then when he pitched on four days rest, he didn't pitch well. I really worry for Omar Minaya that this could be a terrible deal.

And I'll tell you why I object to Fern Cuza. I think the right thing is to do the best thing for your client. And the best thing for your client whose already made $92 million and is guaranteed $133 million dollars. He's allowed to do basically what he wants to do. People leave him alone. Nobody made a big stink about his not going to the sixth game of the Yankees series, which I still think is preposterous. But in New York, well over half the media view him as a complete and utter mercenary who grovels to get one extra dollar. Pedro does not take kindly to any criticism. He's going to get killed in New York. And with the franchise run by a PR guy from New York named Stu Sucherman, cause he has the final say on every decision made because he's Fred Wilpon's PR hack, I just think he's in for big trouble. I think he could be miserable, or it's obvious there's a chance he's gonna break down. This has all the earmarks of a disaster and an ugly way for his career to end." -- Peter Gammons on WEEI's Big Show

Yikes!

For more Gammons on 'Dro, check out http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=1946349