Posts tagged MiguelTejada at FanHouse

Our MLB editor provides weekly dispatches from major league games in Notes From the Clubhouse.

Last week, the Orioles celebrated the 25th anniversary of their 1983 World Series title. That was the last time the once-proud franchise won a championship, in case you were wondering, and it's been a decade since they were relevant.

Eight days later GM Andy MacPhail did nothing at the trade deadline despite his club's grim chances in 2008. Closer George Sherrill is still an Oriole. So is second baseman Brian Roberts, first baseman Aubrey Huff, outfielder Jay Payton and starting pitcher Daniel Cabrera.

To an outsider it might look like the latest gaffe from a front office that has been as hapless as they come since the days of the Clinton administration. But spend a few days with the team at Camden Yards and you get an entirely different vibe.

MacPhail has overhauled the organization in such a way that there's very real hope for the very near future. In perfect concert, manager Dave Trembley has changed the clubhouse culture, stressing things like accountability, respect and appreciation. It's enough to make you see the light at the end of the tunnel, if nothing else.

July 31 is rapidly approaching. Buy or Sell lets each team know where they stand.

Ahhhh, Ned Colletti. He's famous around these parts, you know. Many believe he's a lame duck GM at this point, what with, oh, signing Andruw Jones to a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal. And the Dodgers stinking. Relatively.

But the thing Ole' Steady Neddy's got going for him is that the Dodgers are in a division that matches Ned in overall mediocrity, the wild, wild NL West, where .500 will take you to the postseason. So what should Ned do, in his potentially final trading deadline hurrah as Dodgers GM?

Buy, of course! Matt Holliday, Mark Teixeira, you name it. Joe Blanton, sure. Overpriced, nearly free agent veterans for potential superstars whose only fault is that they can't listen? That's Ned's wheelhouse, kids.

July 31 is rapidly approaching. Buy or Sell lets each team know where they stand.

It is absolutely, completely 100% unfathomable to me that we have to answer this question for the Astros. They're currently standing at 44-51, in last place in the NL Central, 13 games behind the Cubs and 8.5 back of the Wild Card. They've got no pitching staff to speak of and their offense is old. This team isn't a contender and they're in serious danger of falling into a huge rut because of the emptiness of their farm system. The answer here is an emphatic, "SELL! SELL! SELL!'

And yet, Ed Wade isn't convinced. He seems to think that there's a way for him to patch the team together and make a run at something this year. At the very least, he's refusing to rebuild this year. That's a dangerous idea for a team that's top two prospects (Hunter Pence, J.R. Towles) are already in the majors. Of course, Wade is the guy that sent a passel of prospects to Baltimore for Miguel Tejada over the winter, so don't doubt him on this one.

The other problem the Astros face is that they don't really have any terribly attractive "sell" candidates. Their best players (Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Carlos Lee, and Tejada, I guess) are all kind of old and locked up until the 2011/2012 neighborhood. Really, the Astros kind of look to be painted into a corner for the near future, and having Wade at the helm isn't going to help things.

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: Nate McLouth over Jason Bay- It's not that McLouth isn't a deserving All-Star, because he is. The problem is that he's mired in a terrible slump, putting up a .209/.258/.355 line with two homers over the last month or so (prior to today's game). There's a decent chance that by the end of the year, McLouth will have faded completely. Still, he made the team over Jason Bay, who's already a two-time All-Star and is slugging along like he has every year of his career besides an injury-filled 2007. It should take more than a flash in the pan to make an All-Star team.

Grievance: Miguel Tejada? Really?- After a down year in Baltimore last year, Tejada got off to a decent start this year. That's all quickly gone to hell, as he's hitting .198 since May 30th. Tejada's not an All-Star, he's a guy in the twilight of his career that Ed Wade is going to regret trading for by the end of the season.

Grievance: Adam Dunn isn't even a snub- I get that Dunn's only hitting .228. Aren't we to the point of enlightened fanhood that people can look beyond that and realize that his .895 OPS makes him a snub?

Grievance: Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome are starters- Fan voting is stupid and unreliable. We say that every year. This year, these two are the reason.

Other snubs: Carlos Lee (unless he wins the final vote but let's be honest, dude's got no chance against David Wright).

Generally, All-Star balloting is an exercise in popularity and futility. Ken Griffey Jr. leads all three of the Pirates' outfielders in voting right now, despite the fact that the Pirates have the best outfield in the NL right now (I'm being serious, look it up). Sometimes, however, the balloting provides an interesting window into the psyche of baseball fans. Case in point: if the All-Star Game were tomorrow, Miguel Tejada would be starting at shortstop for the National League.

I'm trying, but I can't even begin to wrap my brain around this. This off-season Tejada was named in the Mitchell Report and was revealed to be two years older than everyone thought, and was basically made a whipping boy for whatever seemed to be wrong with baseball in any given week. Still, he's leading the National League in All-Star balloting, despite the fact that he's not even having that great of a year.

Clearly, no one cares that Tejada took steroids, lied to federal investigators about that, and lied to all three of the teams that he's played for about his age. Being a good guy isn't a prerequisite for All-Stars and by all accounts, Tejada is a good guy despite all of the things I've listed above. It's time to stop harping on steroids, because it's obvious that the fans don't care anymore (unless we're talking about Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens).

One of the biggest surprises for me to this early point in the baseball season is the mild success of the Astros, who are sitting at 22-17 though almost a quarter of the season after being picked by many people to wallow at the bottom of the NL Central. That's an impressive start, but it's just a start. Well, unless you're Steve Campbell. Steve's ready to hand Ed Wade a key to the city for resurrecting the Astros.

Maybe Smith knew what he was doing with all that inside information after all. Wade is less than a fourth of the way into his first season on the job, and he already has done what many suspected was impossible.

[...]

Brad Lidge, Chad Qualls, Luke Scott, Troy Patton, Adam Everett and Chris Burke were just part of the price Wade paid to reshape a lifeless lump of the 89-defeat team he inherited. Wade traded five players for shortstop Miguel Tejada, three for closer Jose Valverde.

Trading eight players for a shortstop with maybe one or two good years left and a decent closer is a good thing all of the sudden? The Astros are off to a great start, but Lance Berkman's putting up numbers that only Barry Bonds has even dreamed of. Miguel Tejada's hitting like he did when we thought he was 28. Shawn Chacon is pitching like a reasonable starting pitcher. What are the odds of these things continuing? What are the odds of them happening two years down the road when the Astros still don't have those eight players Wade traded away? What's Wade going to do to address their barren minor league system? Shouldn't these questions be answered before saying a GM is a good hire?

It's a plotline so cliched that it actually came right out of a movie. Slugger visits a sick kid in the hospital, promises that he'll hit a homer and then delivers. Cue the triumphant music and crying mom, it's real Hollywood stuff. Until last night, when real life imitated art and Miguel Tejada made good on his promise to a boy named Jacob Scott.

"I am really happy to God for all he gives me and when I talked to that kid I just thought, 'I've got to do something for the kid,''' said Tejada, who presented Jacob with an autographed bat after the game.

Heartwarming stuff, made even better because the Astros donated $10,000 for each of the five homers they hit during the 7-4 win against the Brewers to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

We shouldn't be surprised. He's got a long history of keeping promises to little kids. In 1991, he met a little boy who wasn't allowed to see Silence of the Lambs because he was too young. Inspired by the young man's struggles, Tejada promised to pretend to be younger than he was and not go to the movie either and go tryout for the Oakland A's instead.

Years later in Baltimore, he met little Sally Monforth who was afraid of needles. He promised to help conquer her fears by taking an injection himself. Sure, it landed him on the Mitchell Report but nothing will stop Tejada from keeping a promise to the little ones.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups

Chicago White Sox (11-9) vs. New York Yankees (12-10) - 8:11PM Est.

Any minute now, Hank Steinbrenner is going to be on a New York radio station demanding that Brian Cashman trade Alex Rodriguez as soon as possible, because "that overpaid bastard has been holding us back! Anybody that would keep him on their team is an idiot! Joba Chamberlain should be playing third! Now bow down before me and kiss the rings, bitches."

Then when Brian Cashman says that Alex is a great player, and that there's no way the Yankees will trade him, Hank will have him shot in Times Square while hundreds of teenagers who were just there hoping to catch a glimpse of Miley Cyrus in the TRL studios or something will scream in horror. It's going to be pretty awesome.

The reason for all this? Well, the Yankees are looking to complete their first three-game sweep of the season, and they've won the first two games of their series against the White Sox without Alex Rodriguez in the lineup. He won't be back today either.

By now, you've almost certainly seen the clip I've embedded above of Miguel Tejada being presented with his birth certificate by Tom Farley for ESPN's news magazine E:60. Tejada is clearly flustered in the clip and today he says that he's not at all happy with the way ESPN ambushed him and presented the clip:

Tejada said he believes his family was misled by ESPN, suggesting the network had indicated a camera crew that went to the Dominican Republic was affiliated with the Houston Astros. He also expressed displeasure with the way a recent interview was presented and the way it was conducted recently in Philadelphia.

[...]

"They called me about two days before the interview and told me it was going to be more about baseball," Tejada said. "When I got there, I thought it was about baseball and they throw me a 98 mph fastball inside."

Seeing as both the team and Tejada are shuffling this off as a non-story (I'm not so sure it is, but if the Astros don't care then there's no where else to go with it), I tend to believe Tejada here. That hasn't stopped ESPN from presenting the story as a "shocking revelation about Tejada's past." A Latin American player is slightly older than we thought he was! Wow! That is truly surprising and definitely doesn't happen all the time!

Ah. It's great to have Charles Barkley back in full effect. Felt like he left for a little while. Then he comes back white hot, calling the Washington Wizards the "dumbest team in the history of civilzation". Now, he's on the Dan Patrick's radio show (audio below) and stating that not only was ESPN surprising Miguel Tejada with a copy of his birth certificate "bush league" (0:25 and 1:02) but that he would have "slapped the hell out of" (0:40) the reporter if he'd tried to pull that on Barkley.




Barkley's outspoken nature aside, I actually think that's a pretty reasonable reaction. I probably would not be particularly thrilled if anyone decided to pull a Chris Hansen on me re: my age. There are just more tactful ways of going about it, and "groundbreaking" news doesn't necessarily have to be shock journalism.

Via AA