Fire up the Angels hot take machine because the C.J. Wilson injury controversy is here to feed your need to read about how dysfunctional the Angels franchise is. Good thing too because it has been almost a month since the Angels were embroiled in drama. Here I was worrying that they would’ve learned from their previous PR disasters and avoided stupid sagas like this one.
Out of all the controversies that the Angels have been involved in this season, and there have been a lot of them, the C.J. Wilson injury controversy might be the dumbest, both in terms of the subject matter and the way in which the Angels handled it.
First and foremost, the reason that C.J.’s injury and potential surgery is the subject of such consternation is maddening. For some reason, C.J. felt compelled to get his troublesome elbow checked out independently. The diagnosis he received was one that led to surgery, but apparently the team wasn’t so sure. This is something that easily could’ve been handled behind closed doors while the team and Wilson consulted with other doctors to reach a consensus on treatment. Instead, Wilson decided or felt forced to announce his own MRI results, which is what caused this whole story to spin out of control.
From there, the speculation ran wild about how bad his injury really was. The team eventually managed to talk Wilson down and announced the MRI results themselves, but somewhere along the way there were “mysterious leaks” from the clubhouse about players who, what with their vast medical degrees, think that C.J. should suck it up and continue pitching poorly through this injury.
The story has everything! An unlikeable player who might be acting out of greed or self-preservation? Check. Mistrust between a high-paid player and a team who has very recently done another high-paid player wrong? Check. Teammates turning on each other? Check. Neanderthalic locker room machismo? Check, bro.
But do you know the one thing that it doesn’t have? The Angels doing damage control of any kind.
This entire saga should have been completely avoidable. When C.J. came to the team and said that he can’t pitch through the pain anymore, they should’ve immediately gone into lockdown on the topic until all the medical opinions were in. There never should have been a need for C.J. to go off on his own to get checked out. If he wanted a second opinion, the Angels should have been the ones facilitating that instead of apparently being obstinate in the face of his complaints. That would’ve allowed them to keep everything under wraps until a course of action was mutually agreed upon.
Even if we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that C.J. just went off the reservation because that’s what C.J. does, the Halos handled it poorly. That should come as no surprise since this is the team that issued multiple irate statements to complain about Josh Hamilton not getting suspended. At no point in any of this latest drama have the Angels shown support for Wilson. They never did anything to dispel the rumors that players think Wilson is being soft and not pitching through pain for the good of the team. This is something they could easily do, but instead literally the only quote we’ve gotten from anyone on the coaching staff or in the front office is this pat response about C.J. and the team seeking a third opinion:
“This is going to be driven by the medical staff,” Scioscia said. “Whatever decision the medical staff makes, with the doctors, with C.J., is really the direction that this will go. It has nothing to do with what our preference is. It’s about, and always will be about, the health of the player.”
Yep, just Scioscia throwing his hands up and passing the buck to the medical staff. All he would’ve had to do is tack on a sentence or two about how everyone in the clubhouse is supporting C.J. and how the team needs him but also needs him to be healthy. There wasn’t even a tip of the cap to C.J. for being a team player and pitching through the pain in the first half of the season despite having to have his elbow drained four different times.
Instead, it seems like another case of the Angels acting all butthurt because the guy they are paying tens of millions of dollars to isn’t playing great and might be hurt. The Angels consistently display a concern in only what is fair to them. They are like the world’s most expensive six-year old.
It was unfair to the Angels that Josh Hamilton was battling his crippling addiction issues. It was unfair tot he Angels that Hamilton then wasn’t suspended, thus saving them tens of millions of dollars. It was unfair to the Angels that ticket takers wanted to show the country respect and not take tickets during the national anthem. It was unfair to the Angels that poor people wanted to buy tickets to their games. It was unfair that everyone thought something was amiss between the front office and clubhouse when Jerry Dipoto just up and quit. Now it is unfair to the Angels that a player can’t pitch through pain anymore and might actually be concerned about his own long-term well being rather than the short-term welfare of the Angels.
The rest of the world seems to get that the Angels are acting like petulant child every time something doesn’t go there way, but the Angels don’t. At every opportunity they continue to show how blind they are to their perception in the world and can’t hear how tone deaf sound whenever they actually bother addressing a controversy. At least in the C.J. Wilson injury controversy their sin is that of silence rather than outright ignorance and insensitivity. So…. progress?
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