I guess we can trade away Ichiro and Beltre at the deadline and build a new team around our scrappy base of Bloomquist, Vidro, and Cairo.

What site censors? Nobody touched your post.

I’ve just never heard someone use the term, is all.

Sorry, I meant I self-censored. Instead of saying one form of bleeping-bleep or another I went with that.

I’ve just never heard someone use the term, is all.

I’ve never heard someone called a “candybone” before.

Heh, I figured testing the site censors on my 2nd ever post was a poor idea

Bedard’s History:
04: 26 starts, 137.3 innings, 5.28 innings/game, 17 starts < 6 innings (65.4%)
05: 24 starts, 141.7 innings, 5.90 innings/game, 9 starts < 6 innings (37.5%)
06: 33 starts, 196.3 innings, 5.95 innings/game, 12 starts < 6 innings (36.3%)
07: 28 starts, 182.0 innings, 6.50 innings/game, 5 starts < 6 innings (17.9%)
08: 13 starts, 70.3 innings, 5.41 innings/game, 6 starts < 6 innings (46.2%)

Maybe this is simply who Bedard is and the full force of my anger should be at the front office for trading so much for a candybone with talent.

Well, that’s what >I’M< doing. Because physical fragility was a known quantity before the trade and to get angry at him rather than your own bias for ignoring that is kinda stupid.

He’s lasting a hair over 5.3 innings a game. Okay, maybe (I’m skeptical) he knows exactly how far he can push himself before he gets into trouble. When 3 of our relievers have their arms fall off because Washburn, Batista, and our staff ace can’t make it to 6 innings consistently, at least we’ll still have Bedard’s healthy arm.

He’s averaging a walk per game more than last year, and getting close to 10% fewer groundballs than those years too (though he’s not giving up any more line drives than in past years). His K rate has dropped off too, but maybe that means last year was an outlier, not him putting it all together.

He went over 100 pitches/game pretty often last year (baseball reference’s gamelog page is down right now or I’d be more specific). He even threw (gasp) 120 pitches once. I don’t think the world ended, but maybe this (2008 Mariners season) is, in fact, hell?

Maybe you’re right. Maybe asking out after 100 pitches is smart and better than the alternative. Maybe this is simply who Bedard is and the full force of my anger should be at the front office for trading so much for a candybone with talent. I don’t know. Combined with the poor performance for an ace, it just smells bad to me. Given his poor performance, I was juts surprised at all the people jumping to Bedard’s defense without him having the history or numbers in an M’s uniform to (in my humble opinion) warrant it.

Why is Bedard being defended so much here (mostly from commenters)? Ichiro I get. Beltre I understand. Bedard’s media relations being a non factor, all good. But enough people seem to be sticking up for Bedard’s on field (lack of) performance that I figured I’d ask what I was missing.

Perhaps the relevant question is why should he NOT be defended?

If it’s the injuries—we knew about them. His fragility is a matter of record. And that’s a defense in and of itself. I would like to think that we’re not stupid enough to blame a players for his injuries.

If it’s for the limits he puts on himself–see above. Are we going to blame a player for not pushing enough so he gets injured?

Your turn–where is Bedard’s behavior criticizable…

Why is Bedard being defended so much here (mostly from commenters)? Ichiro I get. Beltre I understand. Bedard’s media relations being a non factor, all good. But enough people seem to be sticking up for Bedard’s on field (lack of) performance that I figured I’d ask what I was missing.

In the interest of full disclosure I live in New England so I get to see about 3-5 M’s games on TV a year. Right now I’m at 1.