The Girl Who Loved Andy Pettitte

The Huffington Post started a sports section that I never look at, and apparently one of the things they do there is let Arn Tellem (a bigtime agent if you don’t recognize the name) have a soap box. He posted a column about Hideki Matsui’s signing with the Angels and it was mostly what you expect but this tidbit stood out to me

Hideki takes special pride in being a complete player — at the plate and in the outfield — and from the start of negotiations, the Angels made every effort to accommodate him. On Sunday, during a meeting with team officials at my home, manager Mike Scioscia offered Hideki the chance to show that he can still play the field. Hideki is a longtime fan of Scioscia, and the lunch cemented his desire to play for him. Scioscia’s current plan is to have Hideki test his knees and mobility in spring training. Ideally, Hideki would start in left at least once or twice a week. The rest of the time, he’d DH.

I had heard that Hideki signed with the Angels for two main reasons: 1) He wanted to get things resolved quickly and the Yankees told him to wait for a few weeks while they took care of a few other things; 2) He wants to play in the field again. But I didn’t really expect anyone to offer up time fielding because it seems like a great way to sabotage your pitchers a few times a week.

Hideki is–or I guess, was, since he’s no longer with the team–one of my favorite Yankees (and I have a farewell post about halfway finished but I’ve been busy and neglected it a bit), but if some other team is going to let him play the outfield God bless them and I’m glad that’s not happening on the Yankees. Beyond that, allowing him to play in the field makes his knees even more of a liability.

Will the Angels hold to their promise? I don’t know, but Mike Scioscia has been known to do things that make no sense like pinch hitting Gary Matthews Jr for Mike Napoli pretty frequently and allowing GMJ to play at all, period.

(Possibly) Related Posts:

• Rehab Roundup – August 18th Edition