Two More Words On Soriano

I know, I know... I'm getting sick of him too. Soon enough we'll be able to refocus our energies on hating the style of play, not the players themselves! Before we get there though...

Mike's Baseball Rants tried to put what Soriano was doing into the context of the eternal struggle between labor and management in Major League Baseball. He expresses the same sort of perverse disappointment that I felt with Soriano's decision to play. Now we'll never know what would've happened.

What Soriano was attempting to do was pretty monumental, and was going over uncharted territory. While it's easy to point to his $10 million salary and yell at the bum to move over, it's important to keep in mind that he's still treated like property, having not yet attained six years of major league service time. As a result, he's bound by the contract terms he signed way back in 1998. And while, yes, he freely signed that contract and has cashed checks for many more millions than I'll probably ever see, don't let our envy of his pay affect the principles of the issue.

Back in the day, players argued that they could not be held to a team in perpetuity as some sort of chattel. Fights flared up with John Montgomery Ward and the Players League rebellion in 1890, Danny Gardella challenging being blacklisted after playing in the then-rival Mexican League in the late Forties, and Curt Flood famously refusing to report to the Phils—I can't blame him—after a trade in 1969.

Those players were fighting for the right to play for the team they wanted at a fair market value. That's a right that the players later won to some degree. That is, players must complete six seasons of major-league service to earn the right.

Soriano, though he may not have known it, was fighting for a player's right to play a role that he desired, the one that he felt was best for his career in the long run.

Yes, it's a bit silly in a practical sense to compare what the millionaire Soriano was doing to Curt Flood's momentous stance (if you don't know Flood's story, read this!), but when you strip away the salary, it's the type of battle that might not have looked so out of place thirty years ago. Does a player, who is still his club's property, have any input into where he plays? We won't know now. Soriano's ultimately correct decision to take his place in left robbed us of the chance to find a resolution to that. Another day, perhaps.

The other story I wanted to point out is from one of my favorite baseball writers, Buster Olney. When he's not shilling for things his employer pushes on him, he's an excellent writer who sees things that other writers miss. I've heard a few writers who've seen him work, and they speak with a strange reverance about Olney's approach. He's quicker than them, and he sees more than they do. (And he usually writes better than them, too!).

At any rate, he used to cover the Yankees for the NY Times, and knows Soriano from that. He wrote about Soriano in his ESPN Insider blog. The link works for me, despite its supposed Insider status. (Thanks to Kyle for the link)

You can already get a sense how the winds of sentiment are shifting in the Alfonso Soriano matter. Some folks are talking about him as if he's baseball version of Terrell Owens, and that is simply untrue. He is a good guy, easygoing, and in the seven years I've known him, I never heard him utter a negative word about anyone else. He's not going to start dumping on Jose Vidro, taking teammates down with him.

Soriano's a tough and determined person. When he was a teenager, Soriano signed his first professional contract with a team in Japan, and upon arrival there, he found, much to his chagrin, that not a single member of the organization spoke Spanish extensively; one teammate exchanged a few rudimentary phrases with him....

[Soriano] forced himself to learn Japanese as quickly as possible. When he first came to the big leagues, he would greet some of the players from Japan with great enthusiasm -- Tomo Ohka [me: uhoh, don't tell Frank!], Ichiro Suzuki -- chatting in Japanese.

He had a great spring training in 2001, and the Yankees, in an effort to find a place to play him, shifted him to left field. Soriano enthusiastically embraced the opportunity and played terrifically at the position, running down balls in the gap; he seemed like a total natural, as if he was the next Mickey Mantle, who had shifted from shortstop to the outfield, like Soriano was trying to do....

It would have helped the situation markedly if the Nationals had talked to Soriano about the shift before penciling him into left field. The club is saying that they were not given permission to talk to Soriano, but back-channel talks go on all the time in baseball. They could have posed the question through a friend, or off the record through the agent, or through a mutual acquaintance. This apparently did not happen.

And while the Nationals are justified in thinking Soriano would be better in left field than second base, handling it the way they did was simply disrespectful of Soriano's belief that he is a second baseman, and that his market value as a free agent next fall would be greatest at that position. As a historic offensive second baseman -- and Soriano's production numbers are off the charts among his peers -- he might figure he could make $12 million or so, for five or six years. As a corner outfielder, his market value would be much less than that. You might argue, rightfully, that nobody will pay him that kind of money, but you have to respect that this is what his opinion apparently is. This is why the conversation needed to take place in December, rather than February and March.

Olney clearly thinks he's a good kid, and from my days as a fan of that other team, I'd agree. It's just been one big foul up after another since we first got word of the trade.

But it's over now. Soriano's in left, and it's time to move on. He's an exciting, dynamic player, even if you'll gnash your teeth at some of the pitches he swings at. But when he's going well, he'll do something once a week that'll bring one of those subconscious smiles to your face -- the kind where you wind up shaking your head and chuckling out your nose.

What's done is done. And I'm happy to have him.

Now about that General Manager....