Beckham recorded his first and second career RBI today and it got me wondering if this is the start of him coming around. I definitely feel like his approach at the plate has gotten better as time has worn on, and he is making much better contact as of late. Though his RBI double was a bloop shot, he almost knocked one out of the park of Trevor Hoffman and I can remember at least 2 other balls I though he got out earlier in the week.
This article by Jack McDowell brings up a lot of good points. some of which I agree with others I don't quite have the same stance on.
I'll start by talking about the overall point made in the post by Black Jack. He says he believes that Beckham should get a chance to play every day so he begins to feel comfotable in the majors and can fully develop. I fully agree with this. If Gordon Beckham is on the major league roster, he needs to be on the field. There is no point having him on the club without giving him every opportunity possible to become the player we all hope for him to be.
That being said McDowell criticizes Ozzie for "not being a fan" of Beckham. I don't think that is true at all. I hate when people look into what Ozzie says and how he makes his lineup as exactly what he thinks about players. So what if Ozzie doesn't come to Beckham's defense every time a question is asked. That's not Ozzie Guillen. His personality is to talk about what is on his mind, and what is on his mind is winning baseball games. Since Beckham has been a part of this team, that is not something that has been happening very often. I'm not blaming it on Gordon, nor is Ozzie in my opinion, but Beckham has not exactly been pushing this team to victories with his below .100 average.
And as I said earlier I am all for letting Beckham play. I think you have to. And I agree that he is not that much of a downgrade to Fields (and I guarantee he will eventually be better than Fields). But I think the situation was handled incorrectly in the first place. Beckham was called up to the bigs kind of randomly. There was not an injury that forced him to be called up nor was he expected to be the savior of a struggling team. He was brought up because Kenny Williams felt it was time. Personally I was really excited for him to come up. But I said then, and I still say now that it was not the correct time. The Sox were not out of the division race then, and they are not out of it now.
But now that Beckham is here, he must stay. This is a drastic change to what I said earlier, and I'll admit being a flip-flopper on this one. Just a few days ago I said it was time to send him back down, and at the time I truly thought that was the right move. But since then I feel like there has been some progress. He seems to be settling in more and more each day, and game after game he has more and more quality AB's. This team is reeling right now, but they are not fully falling out the race. McDowell says they are "in trouble", which is spot on. They need to start doing work right now to get back into the division.
So my stance is now this... leave him here, let him play every day, and hope that he finds his stride sooner than later. Sending him back down does no good for the pro team (for him it could help) because there is no one to replace him with. It's frustrating as heck watching him struggle, but I feel him coming along, and I hope he can get going and actually help the big league team out this year. I'm not happy that the time to live-or-die by Gordon Beckham came this early, and I stand by saying the timing of bringing him up was wrong, but now that its here and he's hitting .071, there must be a lot more living than dying coming in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment