Add new comment

"People in the M's org suspect that Jesus Montero's catching is creating teamwide dysfunction." As a guy who deals in tangibles and not intangibles, this statement, for me, raises several questions:
1) What are the concrete on-field effects of this teamwide dysfunction? E.g., players not trying, pitchers making wrong pitches in key situations, poor defensive positioning, baserunning mistakes, etc?
2) What specific actions are being done by Montero to create the dysfunction? E.g., poor pitch calling, poor framing, failure to block pitches in the dirt, poor throws against baserunners, etc? If there specific areas of sub-standard performance, then they should be addressed in an improvement/training program.
3) What is the role of our newly-acquired corps of veteran leaders (Ibanez, Morse, Bay, Shoppach, etc) to mitigate this dysfunction? Shouldn't Raul be sitting Montero down and explaining the "right way" to do things to get the team functional? If Raul can't do this sort of thing, then what good is veteran leadership?
4) Wedge is an ex-catcher. I assume that his leash is fairly short - if the M's don't make .500 this year with an upward trend, I assume his job is in question. I also assume that this dysfunction should be most apparent to him. Shouldn't he be fixing the problem right now, to protect his own job?