Now Tino? I Told You They Were Desperate!

A couple of days ago, I discussed a report that the Yankees were considering bringing back David Wells by saying this: The Junkees are looking to recreate the Junkees of '96-'00, so what do they do? They bring back the same players from that era!

In the words of Rush Limbaugh – see, I told you so, because the Daily Snooze is now reporting that the Junkees are talking to Tino Martinez about coming back. Tino Martinez! The guy was a bust in St. Louis, the Cardinals somehow managed to dump his salary onto Tampa Bay, and now the Devil Rays don’t want him!

Now you know that had he not played for the Junkees, George would have zero interest in Tino. But, in a lame effort to recreate the dynasty, George will bring back an aging first baseman who the Devil Rays don’t want. Think about it.

Now you’ll tell me that he’s only an insurance policy anyway, in case Giambi doesn’t work out… Nonsense. Either Giambi will be healthy, in which case Tino will sit and rot on the bench, like Mike Stanley did in ’97, or Tino will have to play every day, and when they see that they are not getting the production they want, they’ll go out and acquire a power hitter.

Tino had one great year – 1997, when he hit 44 home runs. Since then, he’s been decent, although he’s hit .262 in two of the last three seasons, and hasn’t come close to 44 homeruns in the past few years. George doesn’t realize that Tino wasn’t the reason the Junkees won all those championships. They won because of pitching, pitching, and pitching. What did Tino do really? Sure, he hit the big grand slam in Game 1 of the ’98 World Series, but (a) the score was tied then, so chances are the Junkees would have come back anyway; and (b) the Padres didn’t have a chance in Games 2, 3, and 4, so I can’t go crazy with the Tino home run.

But when you’re desperate, you do crazy things. But enough about Kevin Brown…