Paging Mike Sweeney, Circa 2001
For the past several years, Mike Sweeney’s taken a lot of flak from fans for not staying healthy while collecting an $11 million paycheck every season. Much of it consisted of justified complaints; no fan wants his team’s highest-paid (and often best) player sitting on the bench because of a persistent back injury, since the team will probably be worse off because of it. Some of it, however, wasn’t justified, and those arguments were the ones that really got under my skin. Mike hasn’t been faking his back injury, and I’m sure he’s been doing everything in his power to return to the field on an everyday basis; it’s just that no remedy’s worked so far. I’ve made very few if any of either type of complaint about Mike since this back thing started becoming a persistent problem, mostly because I don’t see what good it’d do to scream about something I have no control over.
None of that’s to say I’ve fully supported him either, because he’s one of the best right-handed bats in the American League when 100 percent healthy, and the Royals’ offense is far worse when he isn’t in the lineup. As a result, consider me to have been in the middle on this since 2002, the year Sweeney’s back flared up. Unfortunately, his comments in the Kansas City Star last week were discouraging at best to everybody who read them (including yours truly) because he, as a player who doesn’t make personnel decisions, doesn’t have much room to tell Allard Baird how to run his baseball team. Even then, I gave Sweeney the benefit of the doubt and just let the issue roll off my back, hoping the Royals would 1) handle it internally and 2) see it slowly fade away before pitchers and catchers report to Surprise, Arizona for Spring Training.
And wouldn’t ya know it, they almost did both. However, "almost" only counts in horseshoes. Tonight, I write to you as a Royals fan who has never been more horrified in my ten years of pulling for this team. That’s saying something: Few things could be more horrifying than what the Royals have "accomplished" on the field since 1995. Sweeney and the Royals started off well with handling Mike’s statements internally. Sweens called Baird, who gave him David Glass’s cell phone number to call so the two could talk man-to-man. They spoke last night and the conversation was by all accounts a successful one, so that was a definite step in the right direction towards clearing the air with Sweeney’s grievances so both parties could move past it. In my opinion, that’s where this nonsense should’ve stopped, but Mike made damn sure that wouldn’t be the case when he called the Royals Hot Stove radio program to report to the world that everything’s okay.
Did he stop and just talk about the upcoming season? Of course not, because he felt like taking some more potshots at the Royals’ brass in the way they’ve run the team. As I noted on Monday, Mike needs to realize that having a lower payroll and building from within is the way the Royals have to be run. What I forgot to mention was Sweeney’s additional need to stop complaining when the team releases or trades his best friends. For example, when Curtis Leskanic was given his walking papers in the middle of last year, Mike hung a picture of Lesky in his locker in a weird protest kind of way. During the interview, he continued to make reference to the Royals cutting "character guys like Brent Mayne," and that the biggest blows were the losses of Carlos Beltran and "my best friend in baseball, Joe Randa." Additionally, he was upset that his "good friend John Mizerock got fired because … apparently … we got thrown out too many times at home plate."
Once again, that would’ve been a good place to stop talking, but he kept right on going … and painted himself into an even bigger corner, in my opinion. Listening to the interview, I heard a Mike Sweeney who didn’t sound sincere when he talked about how reassured he was that the Royals were, in fact, going in the direction winning ballclubs take. I thought he sounded very mechanical with his words, almost like he was told by the team to call the show and say what he did to Ryan LeFebvre and Denny Matthews. And what do you know? At the 23:19 mark of the interview, Sweeney dropped this:
None of that’s to say I’ve fully supported him either, because he’s one of the best right-handed bats in the American League when 100 percent healthy, and the Royals’ offense is far worse when he isn’t in the lineup. As a result, consider me to have been in the middle on this since 2002, the year Sweeney’s back flared up. Unfortunately, his comments in the Kansas City Star last week were discouraging at best to everybody who read them (including yours truly) because he, as a player who doesn’t make personnel decisions, doesn’t have much room to tell Allard Baird how to run his baseball team. Even then, I gave Sweeney the benefit of the doubt and just let the issue roll off my back, hoping the Royals would 1) handle it internally and 2) see it slowly fade away before pitchers and catchers report to Surprise, Arizona for Spring Training.
And wouldn’t ya know it, they almost did both. However, "almost" only counts in horseshoes. Tonight, I write to you as a Royals fan who has never been more horrified in my ten years of pulling for this team. That’s saying something: Few things could be more horrifying than what the Royals have "accomplished" on the field since 1995. Sweeney and the Royals started off well with handling Mike’s statements internally. Sweens called Baird, who gave him David Glass’s cell phone number to call so the two could talk man-to-man. They spoke last night and the conversation was by all accounts a successful one, so that was a definite step in the right direction towards clearing the air with Sweeney’s grievances so both parties could move past it. In my opinion, that’s where this nonsense should’ve stopped, but Mike made damn sure that wouldn’t be the case when he called the Royals Hot Stove radio program to report to the world that everything’s okay.
Did he stop and just talk about the upcoming season? Of course not, because he felt like taking some more potshots at the Royals’ brass in the way they’ve run the team. As I noted on Monday, Mike needs to realize that having a lower payroll and building from within is the way the Royals have to be run. What I forgot to mention was Sweeney’s additional need to stop complaining when the team releases or trades his best friends. For example, when Curtis Leskanic was given his walking papers in the middle of last year, Mike hung a picture of Lesky in his locker in a weird protest kind of way. During the interview, he continued to make reference to the Royals cutting "character guys like Brent Mayne," and that the biggest blows were the losses of Carlos Beltran and "my best friend in baseball, Joe Randa." Additionally, he was upset that his "good friend John Mizerock got fired because … apparently … we got thrown out too many times at home plate."
Once again, that would’ve been a good place to stop talking, but he kept right on going … and painted himself into an even bigger corner, in my opinion. Listening to the interview, I heard a Mike Sweeney who didn’t sound sincere when he talked about how reassured he was that the Royals were, in fact, going in the direction winning ballclubs take. I thought he sounded very mechanical with his words, almost like he was told by the team to call the show and say what he did to Ryan LeFebvre and Denny Matthews. And what do you know? At the 23:19 mark of the interview, Sweeney dropped this:
After speaking with Mr. Glass today -- and I spoke with Mr. Glass and Allard -- they said, "Mike, you know what? It’s a positive thing. You know, go out and tell our Royals fans that we hit a speed bump in the road, but we’re smooth-sailing now, everyone’s on the same page."He went on to call Glass a "super man" and Baird a "great GM," so he’s starting to backtrack a little bit on those apparently well-quoted statements in Jeff Passan’s article. It’s nice that he’s taking responsibility for his actions, but I’ve still had it with him. Although this really isn't for me to determine, I don't think he was being at all sincere in his explanation for going clubhouse GM on the guys who run the team, and that bothers me. Unfortunately, none of this is going to stop until Mike accepts that baseball is a business, and that the Royals can’t keep all of his buddies around for the rest of his career. Those players were let go because they either got too expensive or because their production was either in or likely to decline. In addition, there were younger and less-expensive players to come up and take their places. Sweeney’s a good guy with a good heart, but that heart of his is leading him to say and think things he shouldn’t.