Ruin him? Ruin what?

Covering Jim Leyland can be a trip sometimes, because usually once a day during his media sessions so far, he’ll hit a topic that really gets him going for a few minutes. It’s almost accidental; you never know what question is going to do it. His reasons for not having a team stretch came about that way, and so did his diatribe on how some stolen bases are meaningless. Today, someone asked him about young players and he shifted over to a side topic about youngsters losing their confidence if they’re sent back to the minors:

"One of my pet peeves is when people say, ‘Well, you’ve got this guy up here and he’s struggling a little bit, but if you send him down, you might lose him.’ Well, I’ve never bought that. That makes me sick. I’ve sent some pretty darn good players back to the minor leagues that were in the big leagues for a little bit, and the good ones came back and were very good players. The ones that didn’t, they weren’t worth a [darn] anyway. I’m not worried about that.

"This is the big leagues. I mean, I get tired of hearing, ‘Well, you know, he’s a young guy, you’ve gotta be careful.’  This is the big leagues, Major League Baseball. I’m sorry. I mean, I’ll babysit them and rub their tummy and all that kind of stuff, but come on. This is the big leagues. This is for performance. This is not for worrying about, ‘Well, he’s a sensitive kid.’ I don’t want to hear that. I’m not trying to sound like some [jerk] here. What my point is, they’ll probably have a job at some point, but in some cases people have to go back down to refine their skills to become ready to play at the Major League level. I’ve done this as much as anybody in my career.

"I can babysit them and ease them through it. I’m not opposed to that. That’s part of my job. What I’m talking about is, ‘Well, how’s he going to react if we send him down?’ That’s no good in my opinion. We might ruin him? Ruin what? He hasn’t done [anything]. If the guy’s performing, he stays. If he’s not, he goes. I don’t care who the player is. I get tired of that stuff. ‘Oh, you’ve gotta be careful.’ Is he going to be careful with me when [I'm] down the turnpike?"

He wasn’t directing it at any particular player, just young players in general. And his history bears it out. The one move like that I still remember is when he sent Jeff King down after he had seemingly established himself in the big leagues for Pittsburgh in the early 90s. King was the top overall pick in the draft in 1986, but he wasn’t getting special treatment. When he came back up, he stuck around. He was never going to be a superstar, but he stuck around.