Catching up on a couple stories worth highlighting from the week...
Back in May, Bobby Jenks officially closed out his career with a win, taking the form of a $5.1 million settlement from the hospital that botched his back surgery.
On Wednesday, he opened up about the procedure, what led to it and what came after in a first-person piece for The Players' Tribune. It opens with Jenks occupying the driver's seat of a car wearing only underwear and broken glass after a Percocet-and-Ambien-fueled tornado of chaos that could've ended much worse.
Jenks goes into great details about two years from hell in Boston. It started in 2011 with a bicep tear, back injury, pulmonary embolism and colitis, and it concluded with a flawed surgery that almost killed him, an addiction to painkillers and a divorce.
Jenks has talked about this to some extent before -- he opened up about his addiction before his return to SoxFest back in 2014 -- but the settlement allows the story to have a beginning, a middle and at least one end. Two battles remain, however: Jenks is seven years and three months sober in a terrific development that will require constant vigilance, and he wants to draw attention to the practice of concurrent surgeries, which he calls "straight-up evil."
* * * * * * * * *
One year after the one-for-one trade between the White Sox and Mariners involving Alex Colomé and Omar Narváez, only Colomé remains with the team that acquired him. The one-man transaction machine known as Jerry Dipoto sent the catcher to Milwaukee for a 22-year-old fourth-rounder who hasn't yet advanced past A-ball and a competitive balance draft pick.
It seems like a light return considering the Narváez contributed 22 homers and a 120 OPS+ while playing 132 games, but the problems that plagued Narvaez with the Sox followed him to Seattle. And when reading this indictment of Narváez's defense from Corey Brock of The Athletic, perhaps Narváez became an even more extreme version of himself on both sides of the ball.
The way Brock tells it, for all the ways Narváez overachieved at the plate, it apparently became clear that Narváez was absolutely not the catcher to develop the young pitchers the Mariners absolutely need to succeed.
Seattle couldn’t take the chance on keeping Narváez, not because some feel his bat will regress moving forward, but because of a real fear he couldn’t help — but could actually hinder — the development of these young pitchers who have arrived or will arrive soon in the big leagues. [...]
Really, it was ]Tom] Murphy — with Nola backing him — who made parting with Narváez relatively easy. Acquired March 29 from the Giants, Murphy was one of a few bright spots for a 94-loss team last season. Almost immediately upon joining the Mariners, he got rave reviews from pitchers for his pitch-calling, meticulous preparation and conviction in executing a game plan.
Narváez's case fascinates me for how tough baseball can be. He went from a Triple-A Rule 5 pick to baseball's third-most productive offensive catcher, which should seem like a major triumph. Yet two teams with major problems developing players have dumped him for diminishing returns because his inability to handle pitchers is just too loud, and it's not for a lack of trying.
Perhaps a successful franchise will give Narváez the support to give him a year that actually feels like a success. The Brewers have plans, some of which might extend beyond hoping.
Perhaps the best part of this trade? I'd missed this play the first time it happened:
