Leave Jonathan Lucroy alone, Indians fans
Dry your eyes, Cleveland. Enjoy the summer. Let the man be.
Jonathan Lucroy is 30 years old. For a living he lashes ice to his knees and takes foul tips off his face. This has been going on for as long as he can remember, probably, and with any luck it will continue for another five or six years. For that he’ll make $4 million this season alone, which is ridiculous real-world money even for a two-time All Star and still two-thirds of what the first pick in the amateur draft will make. He is married, has a young daughter, and in a profession that tells him where to be and when to be there and what city to live in, a profession he freely chose, he also every once in a while gets to choose what is best for him and his wife and his daughter and his knees and his face and the rest of his life.
And you’re going to be mad at him for that?
Summer’s too short as it is. Please don’t waste three days of it thinking of new ways to deride Jonathan Lucroy. First place doesn’t come around but once a decade sometimes, so how’s it better spent: Griping about a guy you don’t know or counting the days to late September?
Besides, you’d like Jonathan Lucroy, and if you knew him you’d get it, and you might even have made the same decision. Just saying maybe.
“You’re dealing with life-changing and altering decisions like this,” he told reporters in Milwaukee upon vetoing his trade to the Indians. “Mostly it’s family and the other half of that is your future in the game. Your career. … I have to look out for our best interests.”
“This,” he added a day later after being traded to the Texas Rangers, “is probably the best-case scenario for me and my family.”
If that gets in the way of the middle of your batting order, well, Jonathan Lucroy can’t be held responsible for that. If that rubs up against your views of right and wrong, fair and unfair, man and punk, well, maybe you need a hobby. If you really need something to worry over, Danny Salazar’s elbow perhaps is a better place for that energy.
Enjoy Andrew Miller. Root for the return of Michael Brantley. Experience Francisco Lindor. Love your squad. It’s worth loving.
Forget about Jonathan Lucroy, Cleveland. You’re bigger than that now.
A WEEK BEHIND:
Since June 21, when he returned from the disabled list on a healthy hamstring, Yasiel Puig batted .308 and had an on-base percentage of .390, numbers that typically keep a player in the big leagues. True, that still added up to .260 and .320 and the Dodgers still had some of the worst right-field production in the National League. That led them to Josh Reddick, and the decision to demote Puig, and eventually the question of what to do with Puig in the long run.
A person familiar with the front office’s thinking put the odds at 50-50 that Puig will play for the Dodgers again, assuming health from the current outfielders. As is, Puig, preparing to be a regular minor leaguer for the first time since early 2013, is left to consider the cumulative effects of a personality that frequently rubbed teammates, coaches and management wrong. There was not, one source said, a recent episode that led to the club’s decision to trade or demote Puig, but an organization-wide weariness with all that comes with the Puig experience.
A WEEK AHEAD:
The trade deadline is behind them. The Rangers went big with Carlos Beltran, Jeremy Jeffress and Lucroy. The Houston Astros, straining to keep up, stood on the merits of their Yulieski Gurriel signing. Gurriel, who cost them $47.5 million (over five years) in mid-July, is the 31-year-old Cuban third baseman who is expected to be major league ready this month. He DHed for two games in the Gulf Coast League. On Wednesday he reported to Lancaster of the California League.
Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow on Monday told the Houston Chronicle, “I feel like we’ve got a young team that’s going to be here for a while. We don’t have any windows closing. We’re just getting into our window, if you want to call it that, and we want to keep it open for as long as possible and have as many shots to go to the playoffs as possible.”
Meantime, the Astros host the Rangers for three games beginning Friday. They are 1-9 against the Rangers this season. They were 6-13 against them last season. That adds up to 7-22, which is what all the forehead slaps were about when Astros reliever Ken Giles observed of the rivalry in June, “We have more talent than this team does.”
The matchups:
Friday: Martin Perez vs. Dallas Keuchel
Saturday: Lucas Harrell vs. Doug Fister
Sunday: Yu Darvish vs. Lance McCullers
SAW IT COMING:
The New York Yankees have given Brian Cashman the authority to rework the club into something more befitting an age where money isn’t the sledgehammer it once was. Money still helps, of course, but it doesn’t look so good at the end of your bench.
So, what to do with Alex Rodriguez? He has $20 million coming next season. He’s a .204 hitter. The future – the Yankees just acquired 10 prospects for Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Carlos Beltran – will need tending to, perhaps soon.
So what happens as soon as Sept. 1, when the Yankees are handing out at-bats for the next generation? What happens when the Yankees decide the veteran they want back in 2017 for all the DH at-bats is not A-Rod at all, but Beltran again?
The decision to cut A-Rod a check – be it Sept. 1 or in the offseason – will be Hal Steinbrenner’s. He said this week he has not yet had those conversations. They are coming, however. There’s no sense leaving all that money on the bench.
DIDN’T SEE IT COMING:
Look, the Colorado Rockies were a long shot to do anything but be pains in the neck for contending teams down the stretch. Their road ERA – 56 games away from Coors Field – is 3.62, so third in the NL behind Washington and New York. They’re even an average offensive club on the road. If only home games didn’t make everyone want to quit baseball and take up something sane, like teaching hammerhead sharks to wave and jump through hoops, the Rockies might actually be something.
Still, they’re hanging around in the wild card race deeper into summer than usual, and that was just encouraging enough for them to hold onto Carlos Gonzalez and Boone Logan and Jorge De La Rosa, and then on Tuesday they learned Trevor Story was probably gone for the season. He’ll require thumb surgery, which likely means his rookie year concludes with 27 homers and a .909 OPS. Sometimes bad stuff just finds a team.
