Let’s just establish this immediately: Austin Kearns is not a quality Major League Baseball player. He was at one time, 2007 was the last time, but no longer. He’s 29 years old, doesn’t play the outfield well, is batting .197 with 3 HR and 16 RBI, and slugging percentage of .322 [actually an improvement over last season]. In other words, he doesn’t really belong in the Majors, not even on the worst team in the Majors. He might do better in AAA, but considering his age it is probably time for Mr Kearns to consider his life after baseball. [That's Mr Kearns in the photo to the right, doing what he does not do best -- playing baseball.]
And yet, he continues to be employed by the worst team in the Majors, the Washington Nationals. He doesn’t play every day, but he does play often enough to remind Nats fans of how utterly horrid the team is right now. And when the Nats needed to send a player to the minors to make room on their roster, they sent OF Elijah Dukes instead of Kearns. Granted, Dukes is hardly tearing up the league, but his numbers are better than Kearns’ across the board and he’s younger, too, at 25. Sending Dukes down while leaving Kearns on the roster is dumb as shi a difficult decision to understand.
Is Kearns still on the roster because he is making $6.3 million this year? Is that the reason? If so, it must be the only reason. Understandably, the Nats are finding it difficult to trade Kearns. Another way to go, at this point, is to simply cut Kearns and eat his salary. If nothing else, it would demonstrate to the fans that the possibility exists that the Lerners occasionally allow their decisions to be affected by something other than money.
Tags: Austin Kearns, Elijah Dukes, Lerners, Salary, Washington Nationals
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