The View from Right Field

What Do You Do With Alfonso Soriano?

So what are the Cubs going to do with Alfonso Soriano? Should he bat lead-off? Should he be replaced in late innings for defensive purposes? In spite of all the brouhaha, for Lou Piniella, for this year, the answer is simple. Alfonso Soriano is going to bat first, and he is going to play left field for the whole game. Is that the best thing? For right now, it is the only thing.

Alfonso Soriano is too good to not play. I know he is not a good leftfielder (except when it comes to throwing runners out at the plate). I know he strikes out way too much. These traits were very obvious in his first two games back after his 15-day stretch on the DL, the game on Thursday against Milwaukee and the game on Friday against St. Louis. I know he hit a two-run home run in the top of the ninth on Friday, but he gave the Cardinals a run in the seventh with a couple of bad defensive plays, just like in the ninth against the Brewers on Thursday. He just wasn’t that good defensively.

And he doesn’t get on base enough. Taking pitches makes you a better player. Getting on base means you can score. It works, but Soriano doesn’t do it.

But it is too late to complain about Soriano. He is what he is. Given what he is being paid, and given what he can do when he gets hot, he will play.

And he is going to bat first. Like a certain former Cubs outfielder, Alfonso needs to play and bat where he is comfortable. Unfortunately, that is lead-off. Maybe that could change in the future, but it will have to be done from the beginning of Spring Training, and Alfonso has to know that the decision is not going to change. Three years ago, the Washington Nationals wanted Alfonso to play left field, instead of second base. Alfonso did not want to switch, but the Nationals did not back down, and he gave in – and had a good season. But during the year? That isn’t going to work. We’re stuck. As I said, given how much he is making, he is going to play, and given his nature, it is too late for this year to bat him any where but first.

So what is the problem? The problem is that the Cubs signed Soriano in the first place. The Cubs did not need a left fielder, and Soriano is not what the Cubs needed as a lead-off hitter, but the Cubs signed him anyway, giving him $138,000,000 for eight years. Except that you can’t consider the Cubs are giving him that money for eight years. If the Cubs get six years, they’ll be lucky. After all, another big-hitting outfielder signed two four-year deals with the Cubs, and the Cubs only got six good years out of him. So, instead of paying him $18+ million a year for eight years, the Cubs are really paying Soriano $23 million a year for the six good years they will get out of him – if they are lucky.

The problem is not Alfonso Soriano. The problem is Jim Hendry. Once Andy MacPhail left and the Tribune Company’s checkbook opened up, Hendry has been like a teenager with a credit card, somebody else’s credit card. Instead of spending wisely for what the Cubs needed, he spent wildly for what he could sign. He wasted the Tribune’s money (which I am not too worried about), and he wasted the money the fans pay for tickets (which I am worried about because the ticket prices are getting ridiculous).

If you don’t like Alfonso Soriano leading off and not catching the ball in left field, don’t blame Lou Piniella. He is doing the best he can with the players he’s got. And don’t blame Alfonso Soriano. He is being what he is. You can’t blame Piniella, and there’s no sense blaming Soriano. The problem was Hendry signing Soriano in the first place, and the Cubs are going to have to live with that mistake for another 6-1/2 years.

"A League of Their Own" Comes to the WNBA

Those familiar with the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League or the movie "A League of Their Own" might appreciate this story in today’s Chicago Tribune: The WNBA is giving its rookie players advice on fashion on makeup.

Obama and Wright – Ayers to Follow

So much has been written about Barack Obama and his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that there is not much new that can be said. The following is not new, but it is something I wanted to say. (I actually think the Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn thing is more interesting. I will come back to that in the next couple of days.)

It seems pretty clear Senator Obama knew, for a long time, the kinds of things Rev. Wright was wont to say. That’s why Rev. Wright was uninvited, at the last minute, from giving the invocation when Senator Obama declared his candidacy in Springfield in February 2007. Senator Obama knew what Rev. Wright was saying. He was just trying to ignore it. His big speech in Philadelphia was his way of ignoring it. And with help from his friends in the media, he almost made it.

But then Rev. Wright started talking again, giving a speech to the NAACP in Detroit last Sunday and making an appearance before the National Press Club in Washington on Monday.

And that made Barack Obama mad. But what is interesting is what Senator got upset about. Senator Obama did not get mad about the things Rev. Wright said concerning 9/11 or the United States inventing AIDS to kill black people or anything like that. Those things weren’t new. Those things didn’t bother Senator Obama enough go get him really upset. What bothered Senator Obama was what Rev. Wright said about him. That was what made Barack Obama upset:

"[W]hat I think particularly angered me was his [Rev. Wright’s] suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. …

I don't think that he [Rev. Wright] showed much concern for me. I don't -- more importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign and what we're trying to do for the American people and with the American people. …

[A]t a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's -- that's a show of disrespect to me. It's a -- it is also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign."

In other words, it wasn’t what Rev. Wright said about the United States that really bothered Barack Obama; it was what Rev. Wright said about Barack Obama – because, apparently, in Barack Obama’s opinion: "It’s all about me."

A Candidate to Be Proud Of – Part 2

Last week John McCain went to Youngstown, Ohio, and told the voters there the truth: that their old jobs were not coming back and that he wasn’t going to tell them otherwise just because there is an election coming up.

Yesterday Senator McCain was in Iowa. Here is what the Associated Press reported:

"Some things never change: Republican John McCain dislikes farm subsidies. ‘I have to give you a little straight talk about the farm bill that is wending its way through Congress,’ McCain said Thursday at the Polk County Convention Center.

‘I do not support it. I would veto it,’ he said. ‘I would do that because I believe that the subsidies are unnecessary.’

McCain was in the heart of farm country, a place where subsidies for corn and ethanol fuel are wildly popular.

His long-held position against subsidies has cost him in Iowa, the state that traditionally begins the presidential nominating process and is a potential swing state in the fall. Yet the Arizona senator didn't hesitate to bring up the issue."

We don’t need farm subsidies. There is no justification for them – other than that farmers, like too many other people in the U.S., like to get "free" money from the federal government. It’s nice to have a candidate who knows enough economics to understand that.

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P.S. Contrary to what the AP article says, it's not "pandering" to tell Iowa farmers that, as President, you are going to try to "open every market in the world to your products". That's just free trade - and that's good economics, too.