No Glory Blog: Let's Go 2014 Texas Rangers!

Well, the Inge era has begun. In the pre-game, Hurdle tells Brown and Brown leads the question anyway, about how Brandon Inge was the cause of a +20 win season for the A's last year. Supposedly this was to a room of sabermetrics folks and they "gasped." Hurdle backs that up by saying you can't always have "hard results" to show the value of a player. OK, fine. OK, that's great. Then Brown asks Inge the same question and he says that you can't put a number on it by being a "good guy" but yeah that +20 wins with him being there sounds about right. If we take it at their word that these "intangibles" are what turned around both the Tigers and the A's, can take a sub-.500 team to a 90-win team, then WHY THE HOLY BLAZES DON'T THEY KEEP HIM??? It's not that he's expensive. Could it be, possibly, maybe, that this is bull blowback to keep the press off the team's back asking why they'll pay a guy millions to bat .210 from the bench.

Anyway, we'll see how he does. I don't think he'll be of no value but come on. Do you think people talk about McCutchen like this? Black guys are never the "great in the clubhouse/intangible" guys, are they? Once McCutchen gets on track again and has another MVP season, will it be because of the influence of Brandon Inge? How much do you want to bet someone says it is?