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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Putz has dropped a bombshell with an interview he conducted this week with Comcast Chicago (he recently signed with the White Sox). Putz makes a couple of inflammatory charges: One, that the Mets never gave him a physical after the trade with Seattle, and two, they told him not to mention his arm problems to the media. Putz underwent surgery to remove the spur in June. He returned in August, but experienced forearm discomfort and was eventually shut down for good.
Here are the key quotes:
“When the trade went down last year, I never really had a physical with the Mets,” said Putz. “I had the bone spur (in the right elbow). It was discovered the previous year in Seattle, and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality. It was bugging me all through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn’t pitch. I couldn’t throw strikes, my velocity was way down.”
And:
“I knew that I wasn’t right. I wasn’t healthy. The toughest part was having to face the media and tell them that you feel fine, even though you know there’s something wrong and they don’t want you telling them that you’re banged up.”
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1. The Kids Are Enright (1k5v3L)So, if true, here's at least one injury which can't be blamed on "bad luck", but rather must be attributed to sheer incompetence.
So what's the tab so far for Putz, what with his salary, the buyout, and the guys traded for him--$20 million? More?
Because the newspaper found out?
Carlos Beltran is probably the smartest person affiliated with the Mets. (Wish he could have decided to have his procedure earlier though!)
They were excited about the trade and didn't want facts to get in the way of that excitement, so they decided to stick their head in the sand and hope for the best. In a way, it's a lot like the Kazmir deal, where the Mets didn't so much as trade for Victor Zambrano as they traded for their own fantasy version of Victor Zambrano.
Do you know how many of those jerseys they sold in NY?
Honestly, I just think the front office thought he had enough stuff, even with the bone spur, to outperform the options they had (Aaron Heilman and an assortment of also rans and unproven minor leaguers). It bothers me because I innately feel like a physical may have provided them with more data so as to better evaluate the situation, but, well, pitchers do pitch with bone spurs, and management knew he had one prior to the trade, so it all boils down to trusting that the front office made a reasonable gamble at the time.
Problem is, who to trusts this front office today?
2-4-6-8!
Wilpon's crimes were very great!
I figured most the of the injuries were attributed to sheer incompetence.
I think that's right on. Rather than fire Omar, which he should have done after 2008, Jeff Wilpon instead said the team would engage in "addition by subtraction" so as to move on from the '08 collapse. Giving up 5 guys for a $10 million closer not to close was a wobbly idea from the start even if Putz had performed, but the Mets were only interested in demonstrating how willing they were to join the chorus blaming Aaron Heilman for all their problems.
And they have been to 2 world series. Coincidence? Well, no.
The more I read, the more I'm in Beltran's corner. Why would anyone trust this organization? It's time to fire everyone involved with the front office.
This "new" information really doesn't bother me. It's not like the Mets traded for Putz based on the information that he was 100% healthy when he wasn't.
“In our review of the player’s medical records in the acquisition of J.J. Putz, we were aware that he had a bone spur before the trade. He had the same condition in 2008 and was able to pitch with it. J.J. underwent an exam during Spring Training and an additional exam and MRI before he was cleared to play in last year’s World Baseball Classic. Unfortunately the spur did flare up again in May, and he missed the rest of the season. We are happy to hear he is feeling well, and wish him success with the White Sox.”
The Mets did some diligence and took a risk. Not a good one, in hindsight -- maybe not even at the time -- but they didn't go into this as blind as Putz' remarks made it seem.
Forgive me, I don't quite understand what you are asking. I think the Mets knew the condition Putz had, knew what the physical would say if they gave him one, and made the decision anyway. The pass/fail on the physical would not have deterred them because the physical would not have provided any new information. Is that what you are asking?
It's really looking like the Met payroll is going to be 20-30 million dollars less than last season. It's hard for me to evaluate Omar based on this information. On one hand, a team with a 130 million dollar payroll should be much better than the Mets are. But if your plan was to have a 150 million dollar payroll and you've been working on that assumption, you probably made moves that you wouldn't have otherwise.
You can't really fail a physical.
Not that they're an exemplary organization or anything, but since the '90s, when the O's say, "pending a physical," they mean somebody's turning his head and coughing before it's all official.
Personally I have no problem with using "begs the question" to mean "demands the question", just wanted to be the first to point out this juxtaposition before a real hardcore pedant jumps in as has happened so very very very very very many times before.
Love,
Banta
Don't forget your Swingline.
I wouldn't have a problem with it ... if it made any sense. At all.
There's not really a debate to be had. There's the correct and proper way to use the phrase, and then there's the way almost everyone uses it in everyday life.
That was beautiful, really.
There's the correct and proper way to use the phrase, and then there's the way almost everyone uses it in everyday life.
To play devil's advocate, is there a difference?
Yes.
Yes, there is a difference. The "correct" usage of "to beg the question" is as a logical fallacy where one assumes the very thing one is trying to prove. The "everyday" usage is as a substitute for "to raise the question."
As an example of the everyday usage (which has nothing to do with the "correct" usage), your comment could be edited to read:
"Hopefully" is incorrectly used in that sentence.
smileyface
The New York Times agrees with you.
That's not the point. It's not relevant which usage makes "more" sense. I'm talking about its usage in the common sense only and whether it should be used at all. To say "raises the question" or "prompts the question" makes sense, and there is no reason for someone to utter something nonsensical like "beg the question."
The fact that this usage would make "more sense" than in some alternate context like "I begged a question for a dinner last night" doesn't tell us anything about whether we should use it or not.
I'm dinging him on a usage item that has long since been abandoned. Technically, "hopefully" onceago meant "with hope", not "one hopes", as it is commonly used today. "Sentence adverb" doesn't come into play; as strictly constructed, the sentence is a non sequitur. That battle has long since been fought and lost, though.
Mostly it was a joke.
No, that's precisely the point. "Begs the question" is exactly as clear as "raises the question" to anyone with a working knowledge of the English language. It's not nonsense at all. "Begs the question" means "assumes the conclusion" among only overeager philosophy students and internet pedants, and all but the dumbest among them can easy realize when it actually means what it says in English.
It makes far more sense, takes far less effort, and does far more to improve understanding (and has the added bonuses of matching idiom to common meaning and annoying language elitists) for "begs the question" to be replaced with "raises the question" in the specialized context and left alone for the rest of us who have a perfectly clear understanding of what we mean.
From what I can tell every soccer deal involves a physical, and it's a real examination by the team doctors. Given the amount of money that even a scrub makes I simply don't understand the logic of not doing a real examination.
Now it may be that you decide to accept the risks associated with a problem -- as the Mets presumably would have done if the physical had turned up nothing more than a generic bone spur.
And McCoy, ways to fail a physical range from an existing condition that your physician feels will requires surgery, a previously unknown condition (I can think of a couple of cases -- though I'm blanking on names -- where pre-signing physicals have turned up heart conditions), or simply being overweight. And pretty much anything in between.
But you don't actually fail it. What happens is the team decides to not trade for you or sign you based on what they found in the physical.
Actually, that's a common misconception...
If he was so hurt at the time of trade, howcum he was well enough to pitch in the WBC?
If I had read this 5 minutes ago while my professor was still talking about life estates I probably would have gotten kicked out of class. This website feels like Groundhog Day in the off-season.
edit: I honestly didn't realize it was Groundhog Day.
Now, how do you fail a physical? Well, if the purpose of said physical is to determine if you can currently be expected to throw a baseball 97 MPH for 60 innings and the conclusion of said physical is that this is highly unlikely given that your rotator cuff is no longer intact, I think it is perfectly correct to say that you failed the physical.
Similarly, if the purpose of the medical examination is to determine if your heart is in proper working order and the conclusion is that, yes, it is, you have passed the physical.
If the purpose the physical is to determine whether you are in "good overall health" and the determiniation is that you are not, you can be said to fail the physical.
Now, if the purpose of the physical is simply to _describe_ your height, weight, blood pressure, etc. then, sure, there's no reason to think in pass/fail terms.
But nobody does that. The purpose of physicals is to apply a series of "tests" that can be passed or failed for the purpose of prescribing treatment to address problems uncovered by failed tests -- or at least I hope that's why my doctor sticks his finger up my ass (which doesn't make me gay).
It might if you enjoyed it.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
There's a good reason you didn't...
*pours fuel over the site and drops a match*
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