Why I Hate Shannon Stewart

Now, as everyone and their monkey knows, I hate Shannon Stewart. Anything he does something remotely good, like hit a double so he's one behind Juan Castro on the season or makes a routine catch look tough, I get a ribbing on how good he is. Which is fine. But the whole point of why I hate him has been greatly overlooked.

The reason for my hatred of Shannon Stewart is a monetary issue, not a performance issue. He is performing as well as could possibly be expected this year for an outfielder who is below-average defensively and slow. I mean, he's probably going to hit .300 and have a career high in homers. All the talk Bert and Dick are throwing about the All-Star game is Twins related hooey, but he is slowly becoming adequate. Which is nice.

The problem is, we're paying 6 million dollars for a guy who is adequate! We are spending 10.5% of out payroll on someone who can be described as "eh". He's like NCIS...average! Yet we're spending this huge amount of money on him when we're on a budget. Does this make sense? We could have Lew Ford starting out in left and putting up very similar stats, for only 385k! Are you kidding me?

What could we get with that extra 5.615 million? We could have another starting pitcher instead of Kyle Lohse (who is making 2.4 million by the way...but that's a different rant). Think about it...which would you rather have...Stewart in left, Ford DHing and Lohse on the mound or Ford in left, LeCroy DHing and Kenny Rogers (9-2 with a 1.98 ERA) on the hill? And we're not even taking into account not having Lohse ont he team!!

So, you can obviously see what a drain on the team Stewart is. So, if he can continue to keep up his "heroics" and continue on his rise to mediocrity, maybe we'll have a chance to trade him for a decent starter! And remember when Stewart is back next year in the final year of his deal, he'll be the 5th (5th!!) best outfielder on the team, because Jason Kubel is going to tear it up.

Now that we have this all settled, and we can all hate Shannon Stewart for all the right reasons, let's all go grab some PLego's and play nice. It's the Wal-Mart way!!