Why Do Teams Keep Passing on Orlando Cabrera

I've had this conversation numerous times with friends of mine and I finally decided to something. My friend Barry, who is a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, says he wishes Orlando Cabrera would have stayed in Boston post-2004. There is no denying that Cabrera was an important part of the magical 2004 Boston Red Sox team. After coming up with the Montreal Expos in 1997, Cabrera played in Montreal for almost eight seasons, coming to the Red Sox in a pivotal four team trade.

In case there are you who aren't familiar with the trade, the Boston Red Sox sent Nomar Garciaparra and Matt Murton to the Chicago Cubs. The Minnesota Twins sent Doug Mientkiewicz to the Boston Red Sox. The Chicago Cubs sent Francis Beltran, Alex Gonzalez and Brendan Harris to the Montreal Expos. The Chicago Cubs sent Justin Jones (minors) to the Minnesota Twins. The Montreal Expos sent Orlando Cabrera to the Boston Red Sox and into the history books as being a member of the 1st Boston Red Sox team to win a World Series since the 1918 team.

So why was he not resigned? Why did the Red Sox let an important cog to their team sign a three-year deal with league rival the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim? The same can be asked about later teams who either traded Cabrera (to the Chicago White Sox for Jon Garland and to the Minnesota Twins for minor leaguer Tyler Ladendorf) or let him walk in free-agency (Chicago, Minnesota and Cincinnati). It seems to me that a player with a career .274 batting average and since 2001 has played in 160 or more five times and in 150 or more games eight times can be a productive member of any team. So why does he keep moving around.

It seems that the issues comes from management. I found a forum page from the Royal Rooters of the Red Sox Nation page. On this forum page, a few of the comments weigh in on a some points that could have led to the Boston Red Sox passing on signing Cabrera after the 2004 season. Many have to do with his extra-curricular activities. I won't go into some of them since they seem to be somewhat out there and somewhat salacious. Here is the link to the forum page What caused the Sox to walk away from Orlando Cabrera. Now I am not advocating this point of view in any way, shape or form. I'm just passing along what I've found and I'll let you make any judgments.

Maybe it was a case of going after a better shortstop in Edgar Renteria (which as we know had a horrible 2005 in Boston and was traded to the Atlanta Braves after the season). Looking back now, the move proved valuable to the Red Sox since they received two draft picks from the Angels for signing Cabrera which are now in the form of Jed Lowrie and Jacoby Ellsbury. In Chicago, Cabrera had arguments with official scorers, managers and calling out of teammates in radio interviews which I can see rubbing people the wrong way both on the bench and in the front office. But it still doesn't answer the question. Why can't Cabrera stay on from more than a year or two with a single team.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this. Maybe it is just a case of Orlando Cabrera being the kind of player that gets traded to a contender for the playoff push and/or he's a player that gets signed to play shortstop for one year until a prospect is ready to take his position. Will he play out the entire season with the Cleveland Indians or will he be traded mid-season to a contender. Anyone out there have a differing point of view on why this is the situation with Cabrera? Any ideas?

FH

For Further Reading:
- Click Here to access What caused the Sox to walk away from Orlando Cabrera from the redsoxnation.net webpage
- Click Here to access Tom Fornelli's article Orlando Cabrera Feels Neglected from MLB.Fanhouse.com's webpage dated May 28, 2008
- Click Here to access Mark Potash's article Orlando Cabrera Isn't The Sox' Problem from the Chicago Herald-American weblog dated September 8, 2008

Curious Trivia Questions from Last Night

There weren't many game on last night and I saw two trivia questions that I found real curious and interesting. Here goes.

1. Which pitcher has the most wins for one franchise
The answer is Walter Perry "Big Train" Johnson. In 20 seasons with the Washington Senators (1907-1927), Johnson compiled a 417-279 record with a 2.17 ERA (WOW!!!!!!), 4913 Hits, 1363 BB, 3509 K's and a WHIP of 1.061. To make his numbers look even more astonishing, Johnson appeared in 802 games of which he started 666 and completed 531 of those games with 110 of those games being shutouts. Johnson had 10 consecutive seasons of 20 or more win seasons with his best being in 1913 when he was 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA with 232 Hits in 346 innings pitched. Johnson walked only 38 with 243 K's. Johnson started 48 games, completed 29 and threw 11 shutouts. Not surprisingly, Johnson won the first of his two MVP awards (1913 and 1924). Johnson is second in total wins just being Cy Young. Johnson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in the inaugural class of 1936. His performance was truly amazing since in the 20 years he played in Washington, the Senators finished in 1st twice (1924/1925), in 2nd twice (1912/1913) and won only one World Series in two attempts (1924 against the New York Giants). Truly amazing.

2. Aside from the Arizona Diamonbacks, there are 4 other franchises that have not had a player win the regular season MVP award, who are they.
Myron and I sat there trying to guess who the teams were. I had guessed that at least two of the remaining four had to be part of the recent expansion teams. I chose the Florida Marlins and the Tampa Bay Rays. I also figured the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals have never had an MVP and then I was stumped. I thought maybe San Diego or maybe the Milwaukee Brewers didn't have an MVP, but the answer truly surprised me: The New York Mets. The Mets have never had a regular season MVP.

Now I was a bit taken aback at that since I was sure that at the very least, the Mets would have had an MVP either in 1969 or 1986. But researching the MVP winners list, Willie McCovey won the award in 1969 and Mike Schmidt had won the award in 1986. Truly surprising indeed.

The Forgotten Franchise

With Andre Dawson’s election to the Hall of Fame this past in January there has been a bit of a renaissance of Baseball’s forgotten franchise: Les Expos de Montréal (1969-2004). Who can forget Randy Johnson with his full frame in the powder blue Expos uniform before he was traded to the Mariners. And how about Pete Rose getting his 4,000 hit in front of close to 48,000 fans in Olympic Stadium. Both Gary Carter and Andre Dawson laid the foundation to their Hall of Fame careers on the artificial turf in Montreal. Tim Raines stole bases in bunches while with the Expos. El Presidente equaled El Perfecto with the Expos. Pedro Martinez blazed his way into the record books in Montreal while the "Impaler" Vlad Guerrero, Moises Alou and Larry Walker were decimating opposing pitching staffs hitting any balls they saw come their way in Le Stade Olympique with the Expos. In the most painful of images, who can forget the images of the Felipe Alou team that was running roughshod over the National League in the lost season of 1994. I can go on and on.



Now you Seattle Pilots fans might say “Hey, what about the Pilots” and you guys and gals could have a point but let me tell you why the Expos are the forgotten ones. The Mariners have worn Seattle Pilots uniforms as their throwback uniforms though the Pilots have nothing to do with the Mariners. For those of you who don’t know, the Pilots played the 1969 season in Seattle before going broke and were moved to Milwaukee by a group lead by current Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig for the 1970 season. The Pilots became the Brewers who replaced the Braves who moved to Atlanta in 1966. So, they aren’t truly forgotten since the Mariners give them recognition and the Brewers also recognize their roots as the Pilots. This is not the case for the Montreal Expos.

The Expos left Montreal after the 2004 season, relocating in Washington D.C. as the Nationals. Major League Baseball recognizes the lineage of the Nationals but here is the rub, the Nationals don’t. As far as the Nationals go, their team came to exist the moment they played their first game as the Nationals. I guess since it is their franchise they can do what they please but to be fair to baseball fans and historians, the Expos should be recognized. So here are my two cents on the Expos.

Sure the Expos never made a World Series and made the post-season a handful of times but nothing should be taken away from that franchise. The Expos were the first franchise that the MLB established outside of the borders of the United States and was only the 3rd National League expansion franchise after the New York Mets and the Houston Colt 45‘s/Astros in 1962..Though their language and customers were different, the city of Montreal gave Baseball a truly unique flavor. It was in this vein that I want to give you a peek of what Baseball in Montreal was like at the end from the mouth of my baseball brother Pete Sophy.

Pete is a lifelong Philadelphia Phillies fan who attended a couple of baseball games in Montreal during the 2004 season. Now unlike the tragic season of 1994 where the Expos were on top of the Baseball world playing in front of a total of 1,249,576 fans, leading the major leagues in victories (74-40) until the strike ended their hopes of a World Championship, the Montreal Expos Pete saw were in a much different shape. Read on to see what I mean.

Wanting to visit as many major league ballparks as possible, I decided to drive to Montreal during the summer of ‘04 to see my beloved Phillies play the Expos . Knowing 2004 was the “swansong” season for the Expos and Olympic Stadium, I traveled solo because my window for travel was very narrow. Upon arriving in Montreal, I drove directly to the stadium and walked up to the box office. The place was like a baseball morgue. I purchased 2 tickets for consecutive nights. The seats were located directly behind the Phillies dugout and the price for both tickets were a whopping $39 dollars (U.S.). The whole transaction lasted about 2 minutes, probably because I was the only human anywhere near the buying side of the box office.

The game was a surreal but enjoyable experience. I sat with Philly fans that seemed to “out shout” and “out knowledge” the Frenchies. There may have been 3000 paying customers sitting in primo seats that you know they didn’t pay for, except for this one loner Expos fan in the deep right field stands. This guy displayed the cavernous loneliness an Expos follower might have endured during these dying days. He would yell and scream Anti-Philly chants, he would stomp his feet, clap his hands, chortle, guffaw, and the entire crowd heard everything, I was amazed, entertained and also a little sad.

The food was not standard baseball fare. The florescent pink mystery frank had a weird sort of coleslaw piled over the meat and buns that when you ate this French mess your teeth would resemble Jaws after devouring Quint. My memory betrays me as far as details go on the other “cuisine” but I remember thinking the signs for French Fries were redundant because we were in Montreal.

I practically had my own food vendor and service was not a problem. I think Youppi doubled as the beer guy for some extra scratch. Youppi was pretty nice, not as funny or clever like the Phanatic, and he (or she) mixed it up with the Philly guys.

The Phillies won both games and it was well played, well pitched Baseball. The second night was pretty much identical to the first. The same Philly fans attended, I ate the same weird food, the guy in the right field stands yelled the same obscenities, Youppi was hovering and the overall experience will be forever missed.

So when Andre Dawson is enshrined to the Hall of Fame this upcoming summer and you see that fancy looking “M” on the cap on his plaque, you know what it symbolized and why they should never be forgotten.

For Further Reading:
- The Sports Encyclopedia page on the Montreal Expos
- Check out Chris Creamer's Montreal Expos' page for cool looks at logo, symbols and uniforms of the Expos.
- Tyler Kepner's NY Times article titled Montreal Expos, Forgotten by Many, Are Reuniting in Cooperstown dated January 7, 2010