Oh The Things We Know

On Saturday, NPH's hometown baseball team traded a big lefty relief pitcher with lots of upside for a backup first baseman. Initial reporting of the trade was befuddled, loudly wondering what Royals GM Dayton Moore could be thinking. The player they got, it was pointed out, could be got anywhere in the minor leagues in any year, while the player they gave only comes along once in a great while, even if his performance last year was a marked regression from the year before. One writer deemed the move "less than impressive" and concluded that Moore was a "Bad GM" who got caught on a "bad day."

Such is still the majority opinion. And yesterday the GM of the team with whom Moore made the deal pooh-pooh's his new pitcher's poor last season and said,"There's a mechanical issue or two that hopefully by now, by going down to winter ball, he's gotten himself straightened out." Got that? It's a mechanical issue.

Only, the mechanics seem to have more to do with tacos than they do fastballs or sliders. It seems that Mr. Upside was cut by his winter ball team for eating tacos on the stadium concourse during the first inning of a game. Here's the text of an email that one baseball writer received a couple of weeks ago"

"Check this out: [the player Moore traded], the 6'9" kid from Eastern Washington who pitches for [NPH's home team], was just cut by Mazatlan. He was pitching well enough, however the team director saw [him]munching on a couple of tacos in the stadium concourse...during the first inning of a game. Apparently, heshowed up in the dugout sometime in the second, but his fate was sealed."

NPH always assumes, when the ink starts to fly about a trade, that the GM knows more than the writers do. And more than simply un-worried about Moore's latest move, we're positively thrilled by it. It may have added five ticks to the win column by itself.