Bobby Crosby is worse than Hitler
After the 2003 season Miguel Tejada was a free agent and A's general manager Billy Beane had a major decision. He could either re-sign Tejada and allow Eric Chavez to leave as a free agency the following year or allow Tejada to leave and sign Chavez to a long term extension. He chose to allow Tejada to leave and ink Chavez to a 6-year, $66 million deal. Protests from some A's fans aside this made the most sense. Chavez was to that point the better hitter, the better fielder, and was two years younger than Tejada. The other reason it made sense was the A's had a prospect at shortstop who would be ready to step in as an everyday player the very next season. You know the story by now Tejada has put together three very good years in Baltimore while Chavez has seemingly fizzled out on ever reaching the MVP potential many thought he would fulfill. You also know the other side of the story in that Bobby Crosby has become a bit of a running joke from being a trendy MVP pick going into last year by some ESPN "experts" and now to an injury plauged, potential bust. This is possibly a make or break year for Crosby to show he can stay healthy and show he is capable of living up to the hype. Tonight in the opener he let a ball go right through his legs and then was the primary cause of a four run Mariner 6th inning as he dropped a ball while trying to turn what appeared to be an easy, inning ending double play. The sad thing is that the one thing about Crosby that has been very positive so far in his MLB career has been his defense and he didn't even have that going for him tonight. It's just one game and I really could careless at this point but not a good first impression to the season for a guy some already want to see out of Oakland.
And I leave you with a random list that I wanted to do but didn't think it was worth an entry. Since today was the true Opening Day here were the Opening Day starters for each team in 1997 which I thought would be mildly interesting to look at.
Kevin Ritz
John Smiley
Terry Mulholland
Kevin Brown
John Smoltz
Shane Reynolds
Curt Schilling
Ramon Martinez
Todd Stottlemyre
Jim Bullinger
Pete Harnisch
Joey Hamilton
Jon Lieber
Mark Gardner
Doug Brocail (!)
Brad Radke
Dave Cone
Jeff Fassero
Ben McDonald
Ken Hill
Jamie Navarro
Pat Hentgen
Kevin Appier
Jimmy Key
Charles Nagy
Ariel Prieto
Tom Gordon
Mark Langston
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