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Body Language
I don’t know what Phil Garner has been saying to Morgan Ensberg this summer, but I do know what he’s been telling him. Sometimes actions speak louder than words. It’s easy to manage players who perform well on offense and defense. That’s a win/win situation. But when you have a player, like Ensberg, who is not meeting expectations, it can develop into a lose/lose deal. When you play him, he doesn’t help you win. When you don’t play him, you tell him you don’t think he can help you win – without uttering a single word. Every player on the team eventually knows what you think of him by the way you use him.
As recently as 2005, Ensberg was one of the best sluggers in the league. He hit 36 home runs that season and drove in 101 runners. That’s what his current salary is based upon, but that doesn’t even resemble the type of hitter he has become. There is still time for him to resurrect his career because he is only 31 years old and in excellent shape. But it’s hard to perform well with more than one thing on your mind. And it’s impossible to have only one thing on your mind when you are unhappy with your own performance, and you know the manager doesn’t have much confidence in you.
What Morgan needs is a fresh start. He can get that two ways: The Astros can switch managers and the new manager can show confidence in him. For that to happen, he would have to start hitting well immediately. Otherwise, the new manager would assume that he is what he has done recently and not the player he was in 2005. The other thing, which would probably be a better situation for him, and possibly for the Astros, is a change of scenery. In another city, the expectations may not be as great as they are in Houston and the new team, having given up something to get him, would likely give him more time to regroup.
The difficult thing for Tim Purpura and the Astros is that Morgan probably isn’t worth much in the trade market at this time. If he is traded at this juncture, the Astros wouldn’t get much for him and they might have to watch him mount a comeback for another team. That would be embarrassing. When a player inexplicably drops into a free-fall, he can take manager and general manager with him. Nobody (except Charley Dressen) ever said it would be easy. That goes without saying! |
