The Doug Deal

(A couple of days late, I admit)

Some people are questioning whether or not it was, in fact, a well thought through move or a "knee jerk" reaction to bring Doug back. To appease the fans. Well, this fan is totally psyched. I love the guy, even though I hear that he can be a little lippy with his managers. He knows how to handle the knuckeball and he has been known to crush left handed pitching (which we seem to be up against a lot this year between the Jays and the Orioles - I've counted 9 total, including the dreaded Lily). Some argue that Theo didn't give Bard a fair shot at learning how to catch Wake and that Bard had the advantage of youth. Valid point, I must say. Evan at Firebrand even eluded to the message that this sends out to others - If you don't perform right away, your ass is getting shipped right out of town (paraphrased by me). Also valid. Actually, this is more valid to me that the youth argument.

I'm not Theo and I sometimes disagree with some of his moves, so I was interested in hearing his reaction in this one:

''It was sort of an ongoing evaluation process," Epstein said. ''How long was it going to take Josh to get up to a certain level? What's the acquisition cost of Mirabelli? What are our other options? We were assessing all the variables that seemed to make sense. The acquisition cost was pretty reasonable. We were at a point where it was getting into the season enough where we thought it was time to do something."

He also made reference to competition (translation = Yankees being interested) influencing the decision. This sort of surprises me because front office appeared to be rather cool during the so-called Damon negotiation process, knowing full well that NY was vying for him. At the end of the day, I think it was one of those low financial risk situations where Theo could address an immediate need at a relatively low cost (Bard, Cla Meredith, and either $100,000 or a player to be named). To appease the fans? I seriously doubt that Theo considers the fans very much, as evidenced by the Arroyo deal. It was a common sense decision in which "[Theo + Co.] were assessing all the variables that seemed to make sense."

I hope Doug delivers offensively this year. It would be nice to see him make some powerful contributions. But no stolen base attempts!