Craig Wilson

Yesterday (just barely yesterday, as in 8 minutes ago) brought us a Craig Wilson piece by Dejan (I wanted to talk about this earlier except that since I woke up it's been the longest day of my life, so many things went wrong that they even put the wrong mustard on my sandwich at dinner and I was eating a chicken, bacon, and swiss sandwich with yellow mustard, just one of those days, I'm done boring you with the details of my life) and I have to say, Craig Wilson impresses me. If I was him, I'd probably be thinking about how I had a breakout season in 2004, then had two hand injuries that caused me to miss a huge chunk of 2005 and still managed to put up similar SLG and OBP numbers, though my homer power was understandably diminished a bit. That would of course force me to focus on the fact that despite these things my own power-starved team decided they didn't like me enough and made up the bogus excuses of too many strikeouts and bad defense to justify signing someone to play my position. Then, burned into my brain, would be the THIRTY SEVEN YEAR OLD HUMAN WINDMILL (with worse numbers at the plate and only slightly better fielding ability than me at this point in his life) they signed to play my position. It's not like they went out and traded for someone like Milton Bradley who could make a difference on this team, they signed Jeromy Freaking Burnitz. All things considered, I'd be pretty f-ing bitter if I was Craig Wilson. And there's not a chance in hell I'd say something like:

I'm still going to do what I've done the past couple springs. I'm going to play hard and make it tough for them not to play me. ... I've always gone into the spring with the thought that I'm going to have to earn a spot. Nothing's ever given to you. As far as I'm concerned, I'm still going in there to play hard and get in the lineup.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'm impressed at how Craig is taking this in stride. And I do think he's going to put up some monster numbers in the spring (because he always seems to). Unfortunately for us, I think it's just a quicker ticket out of town for him.

EDIT (12:28 AM): I forgot the link and I did want to add that Tracy's quote at the end about Craig was a good one.

There are big pinch-hit at-bats to be had, especially in the National League. And I'll tell you this, too: If Craig Wilson is going to be a good player for us, which I definitely think he can be, we've got to find playing time for him apart from pinch-hitting.

This really is the most intelligent thing I've seen said about Craig in a while. I really don't think he's an All-Star, nor do I think he would he be an everyday starter for a playoff team. I just think he's a lot better than Jeromy Burnitz, and I'm insulted that Dave Littlefied tries to pawn Burnitz off as an upgrade on us.