The Week in Quotes: Week of June 23-29

MAYBE THIS WAS THE ‘MAKE-A-WISH’ OF A DYING ASTROS FAN?

“I proceeded to the lunch room and asked Chacon several times if I could speak to him. On each occasion, he refused to meet with me, finally telling me that anything I had to say to him could be said right there. At that point, I told him that if he wanted me to address him in front of his teammates I would, and I told him that he needed to look at himself in the f—ing mirror.”
—Astros general manager Ed Wade, on his altercation with former Astros pitcher Shawn Chacon.

“Obviously, Shawn is on waivers until Monday of next week. Obviously we’ll reserve the right to (file a grievance) next week pending the results of the waivers. … If it’s the appropriate time to file a grievance and one is necessary, then Shawn will do so.”
–Chacon’s agent Dan Horwits

“Up to that point, contrary (to) what was previously stated, I had not raised my voice to the player, cursed the player and had not made any defamatory remarks toward the player. Chacon responded with profane and threatening remarks and got up from his seat. He moved in front of me until we were standing chest to chest and then shoved me to the ground.”
–Wade

“He started yelling and cussing. I’m sitting there and I said to him very calmly, ‘Ed, you need to stop yelling me.’ Then I stood up and said ‘you better stop yelling at me.’ I stood up. He continued and was basically yelling and stuff and was like, ‘You need to f—ing look in the mirror.’ So at that point I lost my cool and I grabbed him by the neck and threw him to the ground. I jumped on top of him because at that point I wanted to beat his ass. Words were exchanged.”
–Chacon

YOU CAN’T DEFY AUTHORITY, EVEN IF IT’S ED WADE

“Absolutely not. If you shoved a policeman down or any other public servant … can you imagine shoving a principal in a school? It was in full view of several players. Players pulled Chacon and restrained him. There’s absolutely no way. You can’t defy authority. Even if he disagreed with what they wanted him to do, he should have had the courage to sit down and talk to him.”

–Astros owner Drayton McLane, on his general manager’s beatdown.

“Hopefully it didn’t ruin his career. A lot of people said it did, but you never know. Hopefully he’ll get a chance with somebody else. I don’t know.”
–Astros starter Roy Oswalt

“That was the incident, I think, that really started all of this as far as Shawn is concerned. He was totally disrespectful to my pitching coach. When I went to try and calm him down, he was disrespectful to me. This was in the locker room. I thought it was appropriate to take him out of the ballgame at that point. He wouldn’t calm down.”
–Astros manager Cecil Cooper, on Chacon turning his back on the team’s pitching coach.

“Be careful you don’t paint the whole club, the whole organization, on one incident. here’s not anarchy in here. We’re not going crazy. Coop hasn’t lost control of the team. Ed has not lost control of the team. We’re pulling for each other and we know we can play better.”

–Astros infielder Mark Loretta (Jesus Ortiz, Houston Chronicle)

IF YOU MOVE MATT BUSH TO CATCHER, YOU’RE HALFWAY THERE

“It’s probably easier to see us as sellers at this point. If we were to be buyers, it would be hard to choose among catcher, shortstop, outfielder, starting pitcher, half the bullpen. There’s not a shopping cart big enough.”
—Padres CEO Sandy Alderson, on his team’s disappointing first half.

“The way things are going, normally teams take [a] sellers’ direction. I don’t wish that would happen. You always want to have a winning attitude instead of a development attitude when it comes to being a team.”
–Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez

“But you’ve got to get to one point where it’s either we’re going to make trades to make the team better or we’re going to make trades to make next year better. … The bottom line is we’re making the decision for them a lot easier when we should be making it tougher.”
–Gonzalez (Tim Sullivan, San Diego Union-Tribune)

BARRY WANTS TO MENTOR YOUR YOUNG ONES

“He has nothing to prove there. He doesn’t need to go to an independent team and hit two home runs a night hoping to get attention to prove that he still has the skills that would warrant him playing at the major league level. His performance in 2007 demonstrates that he’s capable of playing at the major league level for the 2008 season.”
—Barry Bonds‘ agent, Jeff Borris, on the possibility of his client playing in an independent league.

“The fact that no team in Major League Baseball has made an offer for Barry even at the minimum salary has created a level of suspicion that is currently being investigated.”
–Borris, on whether or not his client’s being blackballed.

“Let’s look at the facts. Barry performed admirably in 2007. Barry is healthy. Barry has been offered at the minimum salary and Barry’s trial date is in March of 2009, so there would be no interruption of the 2008 season. It defies explanation as to why he is not employed in 2008 with a major league club.”
–Borris (ESPN.com)

YOU THINK IT’S TOUGH FOR YOU==BARRY CAN OUTHIT HALF THE NL ALL-STAR TEAM

“It is tough being here. It’s tough seeing all the ‘O’s’ on the cars
here.”

–Long Island Ducks outfielder Jay Gibbons, out of the majors after a .230/.272/.348 season and a mention in the Mitchell Report.

“I had a great time for seven years. [Baltimore] is starving for a
winner, and they have a great bunch of guys. I am just so happy for
them. But it is definitely tough being this close.”
–Gibbons

“It’s a league of misfortune. A lot of times mistakes are made by whomever, whether it is the club on judgment or the player. If you are one of those players that they made a mistake on you, you are going to hope someone else sees you.”

–former MLB outfielder Carl Everett, trying to revive his career on the same team.

“If the Mitchell Report hadn’t come out, I believe I would be playing
professional baseball. I don’t know if I’d be playing for the Orioles, because I was in agreement with them with what they did–they were moving on. I had a rough year with them, and no hard feelings. I just find it hard to believe a second chance wouldn’t be given to me.”
–Gibbons

“If I go out there and hit .100 for the rest of the season, and play
winter ball and hit .100, I am not going to hang on. Trust me. But if I play well, I would hope somebody would take notice, in this country or another–just because it is so much fun. I really am living the dream, I still am.”
–Gibbons (Dan Connolly, Baltimore Sun)

HE’LL COUNT PITCHES IN A-BALL AND WE’ll WORK FROM THERE

“We are putting him on the DL today. The great thing is coaches can coach on the DL. The other great thing is when you are in that poor of shape to begin with, your rehab doesn’t have to be that extensive. Basically, we are trying to get him to the point where he can climb five steps.”
—White Sox general manager Kenny Williams on pitching coach Don Cooper straining his hamstring in the dugout.

“Coop said his rehab will last five years because the program is to lay around and do nothing. He’s pre-habbing since he’s been with the White Sox. It’s amazing that happened, because he’s been pre-habbing. You just hate to see a pitching coach go down like that.”
–Konerko

“Let me tell you something, it was about an eight-hour laugh, and at one point I almost felt sorry for him for the abuse he was taking. If it were anyone else, we probably would have had some sympathy, but it was Coop.”
–Kenny Williams (Scott Merkin, MLB.com)

THIS IS HOW WE DO IT

“We had some success that year but it wasn’t till the ’05 draft that we created a system that we really believed in. Back in ’03 and ’04 we had David Chadd, who’s a terrific scouting director who is now with the Tigers. There were people in the room looking at each other debating what it was we were looking for in a player.”
—Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein on his team’s 2004 draft.

“Then you have to get the board in the right order. It’s hard when you don’t have a common set of beliefs that you’re looking for in a player.”
–Theo Epstein

“By the time ’05 rolled around we had Jason McLeod, who I had a long history with in the Padres organization. His first draft as scouting director, we had a lot of systems in places from a statistical, scouting, makeup, and medical standpoint that we had refined… By the time ’05 rolled around, we looked around the room, we knew what we were trying to do… We wrote two words at the top of the draft board that year, ‘Impact’ and ‘Dominate.'”
–Epstein (WEEI)

50 LOSSES AND COUNTING…THE FUN’S JUST BEGINNING IN SEATTLE

“This is frustrating. It’s embarrassing. I’m supposed to be helping the team win, but the way I’m pitching, it’s not helping. I have to make sure I get myself healthy before I go out there again, because I’m the only guy trying to pitch through it. Everybody else, every time they feel pain, they go on the DL, or they take a rest, and I haven’t.”
—Mariners starter Miguel Batista, on injury issues that went unnoticed by the club.

“I have not had a chance to talk to Miguel about it, but if we ever have first-hand knowledge that a guy is having medical problems, we are not going to put them on the field.”
—Lee Pelekoudas, the Mariners’ interim general manager

“I don’t know what the terminology is, but [the health issues] slipped
through the cracks a little bit. We weren’t aware of it. I think he was just feeling something there and tried to gut it out and pitch. While I appreciate the effort, it probably would serve himself, and the team, better if he had it treated instead of trying to pitch through it.”
–Mariners interim manager Jim Riggleman

“I have a lot of confidence in Miguel. His history is so positive. We’re not going to let some bad appearances cause him not to start, but I’m not sure whether we would start him.”
–Riggleman (Jim Street, MLB.com)

“When you do that on the first day after you change general managers, isn’t the timing like saying, ‘This is Ichiro’s team’? Doesn’t it look like, ‘We’re going to do this because we’re going to placate Ichiro here’? But even if that’s not the reason, the bottom line is now they don’t have a center fielder, and their defense is really exposed. So instead of having a center fielder who can really go get it, they’re going to wind up with an inferior defense, which just compounds their problems.”
–Anonymous scout (Jayson Stark, ESPN.com)

THE REST

“Jason has been incredible. Even when he strikes out, he’s making quality outs.”

—Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez on teammate Jason Giambi. (Jack Curry, The New York Times)

“Guys said they enjoyed him. He was a good teammate, and they liked having him around.”
–Yankees manager Joe Girardi, on new acquisition Sidney Ponson.

“If you trade for him thinking he’s a rental, you’d better be careful. You could take him, and he might go 2-5 and say, ‘I’m not going to opt out. I’ll just stick around and take my $24 million.’ And then you’re stuck with him.”
–Anonymous official, on Blue Jays pitcher A.J. Burnett. (Jayson Stark, ESPN.com)

“Even if he someday ends up with the Yankees, he’s not going to play in Yankee Stadium. He still has a shot at playing at Fenway. Of course he has played at Wrigley. But this is it. Either he makes it, or it’s never going to happen. It’s on the top of my mind. If you didn’t grow up in that era, you may not understand. It would be the ultimate… the pinnacle.”
—Dan Uggla‘s father John Uggla, on wanting his son to make the NL All-Star team. (Ken Rosenthal, FoxSports.com)

“He has a fastball in the mid 90s, a loose arm, a breaking ball, and changeup. He’s as polished as you can imagine a 16-year-old being.”
—Athletics assistant general manager David Forst, on Dominican right-hander Michael Inoa, who signed with the A’s this week. (John Manuel, Baseball America)

“Little things, not only baseball stuff. They wanted him to be in The Odd Couple, but he was going to have to hit into a triple play. He wouldn’t do it. He said, ‘I’m never going to hit into a triple play.'”
–Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, on learning more about hero Roberto Clemente while the Yankees visited PNC Park this week. (Tyler Kepner, The New York Times)

“I can be in the streets, begging for money or signing autographs for $2. But as long as Jerry Reinsdorf is still the owner of this team, I can never work for the Cubs. After he dies? You never know, money talks. Everybody in life has a price.”
–White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, on whether he’d ever manage the Cubs. (Chicago Tribune)

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Alex Carnevale is a contributor to Baseball Prospectus.