Putting the F-U in Furcal

You know what really grinds my gears?   The way this whole Furcal thing went down.  Not the Furcal thing itself, but the way it all happened.

For the record, the "Furcal thing" I'm talking about is the announcement made this morning that he will have season-ending Tommy John surgery to repair a bad wing.  The same bad wing he's had for a long time now, that landed him on the DL last September.  This particular wing is the one that he (and Mo) were optimistic about following the end of the season when the decision was made to go ahead and try to rehab Raffy's ailing elbow without surgery.

Now, I'm no doctor...you know what, I probably don't even have to finish that sentence, and you know where I'm headed with that.  I remember when it became public that Furcal was going to try a rehab that didn't involve surgery this offseason, we all just sort of looked at each other like, "WTF?".  And now in a shocking turn of events, the guy can't hack throws across a spring training diamond, and will be undergoing TJ, courtesy of your friend and mine, Doctor James Andrews.

So, who's the Cards' 6 now?  I don't know.  Descalso?  Kozma?  Jackson?  Please.  Ray Vinson just saved himself an awful lot of money if wringing $99.99 out of him is going to take turning a Descalso-Carpenter-Craig double-play.

I'm not saying DD can't play defense, in fact, I'm not even saying it's a downgrade (or upgrade for that matter) at SS now that Furcal's out for the season.  Although, let's face it, a real man would've just had the nerve and any problematic anatomy removed, and pushed through.

All I'm saying is that I don't like the way it went down, and I'm pretty salty over it today.

Don't put him on the DL in September, then a month or two later tell me you're optimistic about the non-surgical rehab Furcal has in front of him, then in January sign Ronny Cedeno, and state clearly that the purpose of that acquisition is specifically to bring him in as a backup shortstop, before you look me in the eye in March to tell me he's having season-ending TJ surgery.

Do I think the on-the-field landscape has dramatically changed at the shortstop position now?  Not really.  I see a minimal impact on Ws & Ls, quite honestly.  Furcal's career OBP is .346, Descalso's is .337, Kozma is .373.  (I know, small samples sizes for DD & PK.)  My point is that we're not talking about the difference between a perennial all-star and some no-name scrub.  Without having saturated myself in the number-crunching, I see the on-the-field difference as marginal.

It just irks me how it all went down.