Comments on: Goodnight, Sweet Prince

By: sirsean

sirsean — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:55:19 +0000

I hadn't read anywhere that he could make it worse by continuing to play -- it would just be that he's in pain and ineffective.

I appreciated seeing that Morneau himself took a step back and said "I think, at this point, I'm doing more harm than good. I think I need to get this checked out." And then when they found a fracture, it was almost an excuse for Morneau to say, "See, I shouldn't be in the lineup."

I think this whole situation paints Morneau in a really good light, and it seems to me that he demonstrated some leadership by the way he acted, at every step of the way.

But yeah, he'll probably be fine for spring training.

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:52:28 +0000

Right. And getting him to start his rehab now will make him that much better come spring training. If he continued to play, he would not only hurt the team, but do more damage to his back. Good call shutting him down now.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:45:17 +0000

I've heard the same thing.

My bigger point is that for the rest of this season, this might not hurt us as much as it seems like it should. He was going to keep getting playing time, and he was going to keep sucking.

Now the weakest bat in the lineup (for the second half) is out, and can be replaced with ... well, not much, but probably someone who'll do better than Morneau's been doing.

By: FunBobby

FunBobby — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:42:57 +0000

Since he won’t need surgery, I am confident he will be good to go come spring training. Word on the street is he can resume baseball activities in 3 months. He’ll be fine.

By: sirsean

sirsean — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:33:13 +0000

It's too bad Morneau got hurt, and I hope he's okay come spring time, but this isn't going to be a huge deal for the Twins for the remainder of the season.

He'd been sucking, badly, and has been doing it in the cleanup spot. It shouldn't be hard for us to replace him with someone who can do better than .100 with no power.

And it means we get to see a race between Delmon and Gomez, to see who can finish with the lower OPS+ -- check the leaderboard on the sidebar. It's a close race!