Get Rid Of Austin Kearns

nobody wants him and you cant demote him

Who are you going to replace him with? None of our good OF prospects are ML ready and the guys in AAA (sans Langerhans) are all playing poorly. Patterson is awful, Maxwell has bombed in the majors so far, Bernadina and Milledge are hurt, etc. Even if you look in Harrisburg, the Lowrance/Baez/Davis combination that are all hitting fairly well are doing so with horrible BB/K ratios, where they will be eaten alive (like Maxwell) in the majors. There simply is nothing there to put in Kearns’ place, so why bother discussing it? Unless somebody wants to trade for him (and nobody does), Kearns stays in the ML for no other reason than no other viable alternative for the time being.

Didn’t Manny say that Willingham would get most of the starts in RF after he returns from bereavement leave? He was already playing more and more in recent weeks. I think it’ll be Dunn, Dukes and Willingham in the OF most of the time, with Kearns becoming a pinch-hitter and occasional starter (once or twice a week, if that).

That contract of his is a big albatross for this team. Think of who the Nats could have picked up over the winter for that money. Maybe not a Mark Teixeira but maybe a quality veteran reliever. Or two. Manny is a big supporter of Kearns for some reason, maybe because he does have a good work ethic. His problems lie with his impatience at the plate, or maybe some undiagnosed physical problem. Whatever it is, he’ll probably stay on the bench for the rest of the season, and then he’ll be gone in the winter. I guess it would make sense to try out some of the young guys instead of keeping Kearns on but they’ll get their shot toward the end of the year when the rosters are expanded.

You can’t trade him either because no one in their right mind would take on his contract to get a sub .220 hitter with no power. Looks like that “big” Nats-Reds trade a few years ago didn’t work out so well, for either team. But if we had kept those other players, we wouldn’t have been stuck with the big Kearns contract, so that deal has to be considered a negative for the franchise.

Which I am happy with. TAWH has been great of late and it now looks like the outfield might be Dunn, TAWH and Dukes / Hammer. That combination seems to probably the way to go unless they want to give J-Max the shot but I doubt it when Harris is playing so well.

I noticed that Chico described Zimmerman’s latest performance as a ‘Kearnsian’ effort. I think when you become an adjective for crap… its time to cut your losses.

dukes in right, I guess platoon him with willingham until one catches fire

but dunn in left exacerbates the problem of weak fielding center fielder, and we’ve proved all year that we can’t cut corners on defense and expect to win, even moreso now with a struggling offense.

which is the best of our RFs and above the major league average. So I think he should play as the #4 OF. He should pinch hit and enter games as soon as we get a lead.