Leave some scrap for the rest of us!

As part of your local contingent of FJM wannabes, I find this absolutely hilaroius. The White Sox have lost 15 of 18 and have the second worst record in the Major Leagues. Obviously the team needs to find more in underskilled and overrated hustle players. So Kenny Williams has determinied that the Sox number one offseason priority is signing David Eckstein. I think the Sox should bat Posednick, Erstad and Eckstein 1-2-3 in the lineup. They would have a combined HARP (Hustle Above Replacement Player) of like 423.8! ...and they would still be last in the AL in runs.

Is it just me, or are GMs and Managers so arrogant that they believe that when things go awry and the team loses consistently, its not the team they put together, its that the players aren't hustling enough? Its a simple misunderstanding of causality. GMs often believe that the team loses because the players don't hustle, thus the team sucks. What happens in real life, as far as I can tell sitting here at my desk, is that the team sucks so the players stop hustling. I see this every year in Pittsburgh. The team stinks to start out, and nose dives when players stop caring. Then they get a few lucky breaks and put together a win streak. Morale jumps up a notch and players hustle during the streak. Inevitibly the suckiness returns and the players stop caring again, complete with a second nose dive. Circle of Life, bitches. Circle of Life.

This is especially true in the case of the White Sox, as they are back in one of those nose dives. The Sox got rid of some of their better pitchers (McCarthy, Garcia), kept the bad ones (see: Contreras, Jose) and a large chunk of thier lineup are light hitting hustle guys (Posednick, Erstad, Owens, etc.). The last thing they need is another hustle guy. What they need is talent, not hustle. Its not the players fault the Sox suck, Kenny Williams, its yours.