By Glen McKee, AngelsWin.com Columnist/Satirist-
Somewhere between the ball field in Anaheim, the production houses in Hollywood and the Winter Meeting suites in Orlando, a script was born. A script chillingly familiar. A script no one wanted you to see. What follows is an outtake from that script …
“A Few Good Pitchers.”
A Few Good Pitchers
INT. ANGELS’ STADIUM – DAY
SCIOSCIA
I want the truth!
DIPOTO
You can’t handle the truth!
And nobody moves.
DIPOTO
(continuing)
Scioscia, we have a team that needs pitching. And we have to get it on the cheap. How are we gonna do it? Sign Garza? Sign Colon? I have the financial restraints you gave me! You tell me to get Santiago and you don’t say how. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That to trade for Santiago, we’ll have to give up Trumbo and do a three-way. This trade will probably win games. And this trade, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves my job .
(beat)
You don’t want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don’t talk about at the post-game spread, you want me on this job. You need me here.
(boasting)
We use words like luxury tax, tERA, xFIP…we use these words as the backbone to a life spent crunching numbers to build a better team. You use ’em as a punchline.
(beat)
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who insists on starting Jeff Mathis, to the extreme that I had to trade him for scraps. I’d prefer you just said thank you and went with a sensible lineup. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a copy of Fangraphs and read it. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you’re entitled to.
SCIOSCIA
(quietly)
Did you trade Mark Trumbo?
DIPOTO
(beat)
I did the job you sent me to do.
SCIOSCIA
Did you trade Mark Trumbo?
DIPOTO
(pause)
You’re goddamn right I did.
Silence. From everyone.
ARTE MORENO, TIM MEAD, CHUCK RICHTER, they’re all frozen.
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