Free Keith Ginter! I had some cogent thoughts about Super Millionaire (re Jason, Wiley Post is the one choice I knew was wrong because he died in the same plane crash that killed Will Rogers) and some cogent thoughts about gay marriage and/or federalism (that promptly slipped my mind anyway), but my real reason to post:
Unless they're planning some sort of Tony Phillips role for him, apparently the Milwaukee Brewers have no idea who their best infielder is. I can see handing a position to Junior Spivey, maybe (you ASU people would judge him better than I could), but for the love of pete, WES HELMS?!? Do bad teams just not even look at season stats anymore?
Keith Ginter, onetime Astros second base prospect, posted about a .440 on-base percentage in the New York-Penn League in 1998. (I was working for Howe Sportsdata that summer and we had to write a special NY-Penn roundup. Every time it was my turn to do the roundup, Ginter would happen to do something good and I'd noticed that he still led the league in both OBP and SLG by a wide margin.) He tailed off a bit in the Florida State League in '99, as all hitters do (very pitcher-friendly environment there), but then won the 2000 Texas League MVP at Round Rock. Of course, at the time the Astros had a pretty good on-base machine at second base already, leaving Ginter essentially blocked.
There was third base. There was the spring training where the job could have equally easily gone to Ginter, Morgan Ensberg, or some stiff. Namely this stiff (I had to look up Houston year-by-year pages to be sure). Then somehow Ginter ended up in Milwaukee for hardly any compensation at all. He should have won their 3B job a year ago but Wes Helms blah blah did they even look at Helms's MINOR LEAGUE record? Having been at Howe through Helms's "prospect" phase, I daresay not. And now this.
Somewhere Roberto Petagine smiles knowingly and ruefully.
