There he goes again.
In one of the longer articles USA Today prints, Bob Nightingale writes about the future stars at the Devil Rays AAA Durham club are profiled.
All three are quoted in one way or another complaining about being in AAA.
However, Delmon Young, as a result of his bat-throwing incident earlier this year has received the attention.
He says:
But Upton says this without attention?
And Dukes says this:
"If I can just do that, if I can just keep my cool, I'll be fine. Because when there is trouble, whether it's my fault or not, I'm the one who's got to pay the consequences."
Dukes is staring disgustedly at his baseball jersey while talking. It has dark stains around the collar. His pants have tears by both knees.
If this were the big leagues, the uniform would be in the garbage.
But this is Durham.
"In the big leagues, you throw your uniform on the ground, and it's washed and hung up nicely in your locker," Dukes says. "Here you do that, you come back the next day and find it still on the floor. Those guys up there (in the big leagues) shower in Evian. Here, we use sewer water."
Obviously the three players are fed-up.
And I can't blame them. However, they can't be recalled until GM Andy Friedman can move some bodies, and he clearly drives a very hard bargain.
If he were a Chuck Lamar protege, I'd attribute his negotiating strategy to incompetence. But given, he is new, I'll give him a pass until more information is available.
There was a very important fantasy nugget in the article.
It was this:
Says Tamargo, "Oh my God, he is going to be some special player. You're talking about a guy who can run, throw and is going to hit 40 to 45 homers a year. "
Keep that in mind when looking at Dukes' HR total this year. Focus more on his .400 OBP and .500 SLG, which if there were more HRs rather than doubles, would be higher.