Match made in hell: Barry Bonds and the Marlins
I expect some team, the trade deadline having passed, to sign Barry Bonds. It could be the Diamondbacks, who missed out on Texeira. Perhaps the Rays, who didn’t get Bay or Dunn. Maybe the Mets, who also missed out. But more than any team, I think Barry makes perfect sense for the Marlins.
Bonds has said, truly or not, that he’ll play for the minimum this year. That’s great for the Marlins, who are the most embarrassingly cheap team since Clark Griffith’s Washington Senators. Barry might have some negative publicity attached, but that can’t hurt the Marlins, who seem to go out of their way to tell fans not to watch them. The Marlins are a game out of first place, and while their outfield is a relative strength, Bonds would be a major upgrade over any of their three outfielders.
Seriously, the only argument against signing Bonds that makes any sense at all for most teams is that he’s not marketable, and would hurt the fan-base. I don’t buy that “he doesn’t get along with teammates” crap — it’s only two months, and in a locker room of 25 hormonally-enhanced men, there are bound to be personality conflicts. That’s what you hire managers and coaches for. Statistically, he was outstanding last year. So again, it’s merely how would the fan base accept him — and the Marlins, sadly, are lacking fans. So it can’t hurt that, and it can help them win, which I do believe they actually like to do, despite some of their very odd decisions.
So David Samson, Jeffrey Loria, et al. Get on the phone and bring Barry into town. If it doesn’t work, no one will remember.
This entry was posted on July 31, 2008 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: Barry Bonds, Florida Marlins, trade deadline
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.