Friday, June 12, 2009

Mixed results for Khalil Greene in rehab assignment


Greene started his rehab assignment with Triple-A Memphis this week. For those of you who missed it, Greene was placed on the 15 day DL with social anxiety issues. His first game with Memphis (June 9th), he went 1-4 with a strikeout. In his second game (June 10th), Greene's bat came alive as he went 3-4 at the plate, while scoring 3 runs. However, he committed not one, but two errors in the field. One of which was immediately followed by a two run homer by the next batter.

The "social anxiety" DL stint has become another way for some teams to send down struggling veterans they cannot otherwise send down (*COUGH* Dontrelle Willis *COUGH*.) There are many other examples of shady DL stints so far this years, such as Chien-Ming Wang's trip to the DL for "weakness in the adductor muscles in both hips." First off, what the hell does that even mean? Secondly, doesn't it seem a bit suspicious that this happened the day after Wang was quoted as saying, "'I'm healthy. I want to start tomorrow." As Jayson Stark of ESPN.com puts it, some of these guys are going on the DL or "inflammation of the ERA."

Anyways, back to Greene. Just like Joey Votto (recently DL'ed for the same reason, despite having a great year) and the Zack Greinke of the past, I think Greene has a legit anxiety issue. He is a lot more talented than his numbers show, and you can tell there is something wrong just watching the kid at the plate and interact with teammates. Its easy to see he has no confidence and is just completely uncomfortable at the plate. I'm hoping he turns it around at some point, as he seems like a good guy and he had such a great spring. I really thought he was going to be great for us this year.

I have recently dubbed him as the "Kip Wells" of position players, but I can only hope the end result of his stint here in St. Louis is much more successful than that of the terrorist known as Kip.
On a side note, Brendan Ryan since coming off the DL and taking most of Greene's at bats:

Ryan has raised his average from .256 to .304, all while playing stellar defense I might add, recording zero errors thus far at SS and only one at 2B. Boy oh boy, does he have a cannon, or what? He has made some amazing throws from the hole at SS. Fun to watch...

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