We complain a lot. Why not? Who doesn't?
Just get everything off of your chest.
Melvin Mora: That contract looks really, really bad. At this point, Mora's a passable hitter at his very best and a butcher at third base. He's also very unfortunately turning into a piss-and-moan guy that is just not good to have on a team like this.
Miguel Tejada: Quickly becoming a shortstop whose bat carries his glove, or at least you hope so. With Tejada and Mora on the left side a few years ago, you had some great stuff. Now, it's declining offense and a pair of bad gloves. Tejada's range is up and vanishing like a fart in the wind.
Adam Loewen: I'll get to him later today.
Scott Williamson: What was the point of signing him? At one point his arm was electric. I've always rooted for Williamson because a couple of times he really helped my fantasy teams. But he hasn't been healthy or good in years. It was a no-brainer that he was going to get hurt, and it's pretty close to a no-brainer that he wasn't going to contribute much even if he didn't. Say what you wish about Todd Williams' 2006 season, but it was a hell of a lot better than Williamson's.
Freddie Lee Bynum: Boob Boom is so easy to root for, but there's just no point to having him on this team now that Payton's back. At any point of any tight game, the outfield can be Payton, Patterson and Markakis, and that is perfectly good defensively. Bynum has yet to see inning one anywhere but the outfield, so his positional flexibility is more of an, "Ehhh, not really," than it is anything legit. He's a left-handed batter on a team that can't hit left-handed pitching. And Jon Knott is in Norfolk?
Jay Gibbons: He's terrible and I'm still mad about them giving him that ludicrous extension. You give contract extensions to players that make some sort of difference, not to the guys that hope to find a niche like mashing one group of pitchers and sticking around forever. To put it simply, Gibbons is the type of player that bounces from team-to-team looking for work. He's not a guy you give a key to. You don't even really want him knowing what your apartment number is.
Jaret Wright: He didn't do anything new, obviously, but come on.
Brian Roberts' slow start might be "obvious," but it doesn't bother me, since he's no worse than anyone else in the lineup that isn't Tejada and he's working counts enough to still get on base about 35% of the time even though he's slumping.
Does this seem all negative? It's not really meant to be. I'm just talkin' shop here. I want to love this team so bad, it's a cast of characters that are exceedingly easy to root for. Base Knock Bako and the Country Boys and Boob Boom Bynum and Markickass and all the rest. They're a solid bunch of dudes. But if they want to contend -- and I think they can -- there are things wrong that I believe can be easily fixed. I hate to watch them stick with the same things when they don't work, because they're liable to play themselves out of it by mid-May again. I just don't want that.