Hey baseball, welcome to the real world!

Now you can relate to the working class of America. This excerpt from Jim Reeves' column at the Fort Worth Startelegram:

Middle man out

The middle man is getting squeezed out in baseball, and this spring is a prime example of that.

Almost two weeks into spring camps and proven veteran players such as Kenny Lofton, Mike Piazza, Corey Patterson and Shannon Stewart are still without jobs.

Teams would rather save money by giving their own younger players an opportunity than by spending a couple of million dollars on a fading veteran.

"With the top end of salaries still escalating, it's got to come from somewhere ... is it from that middle class?" Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said. "I haven't looked at it hard enough to know for sure, but teams like us say to themselves, 'We can spend a couple million dollars on a track record, but is it a track record of more than mediocrity? Would we rather roll the dice and give an opportunity to one of our own kids that we believe in and maybe have a positive surprise?'"

There are bargains to be had out there now -- Lofton hit .296 last year, Piazza hit .275, Patterson stole 37 bases and Stewart hit .290 -- but nobody's calling.

 

The "proven veteran player" is about the biggest waste in all sports.

About the only thing certain about a non-superstar player after age 30 is that his production is going to go down, down, down.

 

So is that the same argument for any American worker over 30?

 

No, in 98 percent of all professions, people can be very productive up into their 50s and 60s.

In professional sports, athletes reach their physical peak at age 26-28, and then enter an inevitable and precipitous decline.

 

Lofton is 41 years old, a role player who made $6 mill last season and a pain in the ass to deal with.
Piazza is almost 40, a declining DH who hasn't had an injury-free season in 5 years.
Patterson, only 29, never was any good, a lifetime .258 hitter.
Stewart is 34 but only cost the A's $1 mill last year. The only one who might be worth signing.

 

You can also take HGH or steroids to revive your career for that one fat contract - without taking much of a pr hit. Just as long as you don't get HOF good it's OK.

 

Wow, they're not throwing money at guys who don't deserve it. What a concept.

 

Stewart signed a minor-league deal with the Jays on Sunday.

 

I suppose I could use Byung-Hyun Kim (30 years old, $850K contract/maybe $1 mil w/incentives), Mark Loretta (36 years old, $2.75 mil in arbitration), Livan Hernandez (33 years old, $5 mil), and Luis Gonzalez (40 years old, $2 mil contrat) as examples that this article is bullshit.

 

Yep, team after team, in all sports, continue to trundle in middle-aged mediocrities, and spew crap about "seasoned experience," "professional hitters," "locker-room leaders," blah blah, yadda yadda.

 

Sad to say, but $850K to $1 million is chump change in MLB.