Bye Bye Barrett

In case you didn’t hear, the Cubs traded catcher Michael Barrett this morning to the San Diego Padres for catcher Rob Bowen and a single-A outfielder name Kyler Burke. (Yes, it says Kyler) My first reaction upon hearing the news was obviously surprise, since it is so rare for a team to make a move this early in the season, especially a smart move. But as I thought about it a while longer, three strange things about the move jumped out at me:

1) The Timing
As I mentioned in my last post, June has been a pretty crazy month for the Cubs. And Barrett has been in the middle of a lot of it. He was half of the dugout/clubhouse fight on June 1, getting the worst of it with a couple of black eyes and a busted lip. He was benched for all Carlos Zambrano starts after that, with Big Z going 2-1 in that time, allowing only three earned runs in 23 and two-thirds innings. Then on June 14, Barrett got into another dugout argument, this time with Rich Hill. So its not strange that the team management would want to deal him. What is strange, and definetly something that I bet the radio shows will discuss and the Jay Marriotti’s of the world will write about, is that Barrett is traded only two days before the Cubs are due on the South Side to face the White Sox. Remember last year, Barrett made himself a national name for punching Sox backstop AJ Pierzynski in the grill. For that, Barrett was suspended ten games and was put into my own personal ‘No matter what, from here on out, I will always like this guy’ group. Were the Cubs so willing to trade the catcher because they didn’t want to have him be public enemy #1 all weekend? I doubt anybody will say that’s the case, but I would be shocked if that wasn’t part of the reason the deal got done when it did.


2) The Team
The Cubs have already completed their season series with San Diego, so unless the two teams meet in the playoffs, Cubs fans won’t see #8 any more this season. The last of the teams’ eight games in 2007 were played this weekend, and lets just say, the teams were probably happy to go their separate ways on Sunday evening. The bench-clearing brawl on Saturday between Derek Lee and Chris Young led to five-game suspensions for each guy and a war of words featuring Alfonso Soriano and Jake Peavy. Yet here we are, only three days later, and the two squads are back doing business. I doubt that Young, Peavy and all the other Padres who felt that they were un-fairly ambushed by D-Lee (which they weren’t) will not be happy to see Barrett walk into the clubhouse. It’s also strange that he’s going to San Diego, since one of their most well known players, former Cub Greg Maddux, refused to have M.B. catch him when they both played in Chicago.

3) The Plan
With Barrett gone, does that mean that Bowen is the new starting catcher? On the West Coast, Bowen was a backup to Josh Bard, playing in 30 games to Bard’s 47. He is hitting .268 this season, with two homers, eleven driven in and a 28/13 strikeout to walk ratio. Supposedly he is good defensively, something that Barrett was not, and is liked by all his teammates, something Barrett was not. Still, it worries me that he, Koye Hill and when healthy Hennery Blanco are the Cubs catching platoon. None are really experienced backstops when it comes to playing an entire season behind the plate. None are really big hitters. And none have the passion, though it sometimes went overboard, that Michael Barrett had for the game of baseball. While I do like the deal, because it was obvious that Barrett needed a change of scenery and as a free agent at the end of the season, a player who was going to leave anyway, I am concerned about who the catcher for the rest of 2007 is. Hopefully Ryan Bowen can be that guy, but I guess Cubs fans will just have to wait and see.