Friday Bantering: Lind, Cabrera

The Blue Jays are trying to re-spin the Adam Lind MRI story. Shi Davidi tells us that the Jays had decided to do an MRI on Lind's foot before/without his mom's input. I never understand why teams get so invested in stories that really don't matter. Who cares if his mom suggested he get it looked at again? I tend to think that bad teams worry about what people think about them and good teams just keep their mind on the game and improving the team

But I get that PR departments are interested in managing news, I just don't see the point. I think there could be better use of their time (maybe reply to emails), but that's a rant for another day.

Lind got an MRI showing a fracture in his foot. His foot wasn't improving and, since it wasn't, he was going to get another test, whether his mom suggested it or not. Maybe it happened a day earlier than it would have, because his mom said something, but it really won't change the end date of his time on the DL. Anyway, Shi said:

Multiple sources indicated that something was lost in translation, and what may have happened is Lind's mother encouraged her son to take the exam after the team had raised the possibility. Such a scenario would certainly reflect better on the club, although it may be too late to change public perception.

Public perception is going to be bad until the team starts winning again. Let's face it, everything they do will be wrong until they start winning again. Until then, ignore the stupid stuff and it will go away, sooner or later.

I am kind of glad that Lind doesn't worry about club politics before talking to the press. It's kind of refreshing to see a player that just says what he thinks and doesn't just speak in cliches.

Also after Wednesday's game John Gibbons told us that it was Melky Cabrera's fault that Jose Reyes didn't slide into the plate. He's right, I said it in the recap:

Throw comes home, Reyes doesn't slide (he didn't see the throw coming, and Melky Cabrera was off to the side instead of straight in view, where he should have been, to coach Reyes.

It is the job of the on deck hitter is to let the runner coming to the plate, tell him to slide, tell him which side of the plate to slide towards. The runner can't be looking over his shoulder to see if a throw is coming in. He has to just run. In this case Reyes wouldn't have had any idea a throw was coming.

Being fair to Melky, I'm sure he had no idea there was going to be a play at the plate, when there was a ground ball to third base and a runner on second. He was as surprised as any of us. He really should have hustled to get to where he was in Reyes' line of vision. And likely did, when he saw there was going to be a play. Unfortunately, he's not as fast as Reyes.

What I really don't get is why Gibby felt it was necessary to throw Melky under the bus. I would have thought that talking to him in private could work as well as talking to the press.

And, if he felt the need to parcel out the blame for a bad moment, why not mention that Luis Rivera should have never sent Reyes home? He talks about Melky's error but doesn't mention Rivera's? Is that fair? If we are going to tell the press about one guy's mistake, shouldn't we be telling them about every mistake that was made on that particular play? If he had held Reyes, we would have had a runner on third and one out. A pretty good spot to be in.

Pretty soon, I'm thinking, the team is going to have to give Rivera a different job. I'm sure he's a good guy and I'm sure he is good at teaching the infielders, but he isn't working out as a third base coach.

And the Jays have signed Mexican pitcher Guadalupe Chavez. He's 16, 6'2" 150 lb (how can someone be 6'2" and 150 lb?). He can throw 93 mph already.

I didn't get to the comment leader board for Wednesday's GameThreads. We had 1805 comments. Spor led the way, great work.