AZ D-Backs Owner Ken Kendrick Calling Out Trevor Bauer?
By Thomas Lynch
Has the season been over for a week already? It has felt like a month.
Anyway, the offseason has begun for all but eight teams in Major League Baseball and the Arizona Diamondbacks will be looking to upgrade, at the very least, the position of Shortstop. Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick was interviewed on radio station KTAR AM 620 (recapped here by azcentral’s Nick Piecoro) and said that it was “highly likely” that star Right Fielder Justin Upton would be with the team in 2013. That wasn’t the interesting part of the story to me. There was this nugget given by Kendrick when talking about top pitching prospect Trevor Bauer.
Arizona D-Backs’ owner Ken Kendrick would like to see some more maturity out of top prospect Trevor Bauer. Image: Matt Kartozian-US PRESSWIRE
“As you guys know, I’m a pretty direct guy, and I will say this,” Kendrick told KTAR. “He is the employee. In an employer/employee situation it’s incumbent on the employee to make adjustments to satisfy the needs of the employer. I hope and trust that that will occur.”
I don’t live in the area so I have no idea how this is playing in Phoenix. It doesn’t seem to be a big deal with all of the positive football news coming out of the Valley. So is this really headline news? Will Bauer be in Arizona in 2013? Is this a case of a blogger fishing for a story? The answers are sort of, yes and maybe. My initial reaction was that is a pretty strong statement regarding one of the club’s crown jewels. However, I don’t think we should be going crazy at this point, wondering if Bauer is all of a sudden on the trading block or if he fits in the orgainization’s plans. After all, he is 21, an age where most guys think they know it all. It will be a Spring Training story for sure to see if the youngster is a bit more respectful but not a dominant one. It only becomes an issue if the same maturity issues crop up repeatedly next year. Until then, this is just a statement by an owner who provided an refreshingly honest answer about a potentially touchy subject.
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