The Epic of Gil Meche

[Guest Edgy DC]

Ashie's strange report aside, how and why does a player walk away from that sort of scratch? It can be seen as honorable, I guess, but at another level, honor enters into it by both sides honoring the contract to the best of their abilities. The guy pitched pretty well when he was healthy and from my position doesn't really owe the team that money.

[Fman99]

Another stellar thread title. Winter has given the CPF brainiacs time to whip up some gems.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Yeah, who knows, maybe they gave him a really big bonus. Part of it I think was his not getting another surgery.

Meche seems to be the kinda guy who'd be happy to walk away with some good fishing gear.

[ashie62]

I have to believe Meche gets something in the way of insurance money...

[Guest Edgy DC]

I can think of worse ways to earn $12 million than getting some shoulder surgery on the team's dime and doing my rehab and having my contract expire before I took the field again.

Man, that better be some good tackle.

[ashie62]

Edgy DC wrote: I can think of worse ways to earn $12 million than getting some shoulder surgery on the team's dime and doing my rehab and having my contract expire before I took the field again. Man, that better be some good tackle.

I'll eat the tackle for far less.

[Ceetar]

Edgy DC wrote: I can think of worse ways to earn $12 million than getting some shoulder surgery on the team's dime and doing my rehab and having my contract expire before I took the field again. Man, that better be some good tackle.

laziness? surgery and rehab and probably not even pitching sounds like a pain.

[metirish]

"I didn't want to go try it again for another season and be the guy making $12 million doing absolutely nothing to help their team,"

Certainly not the norm.

[Guest Edgy DC]

The thing is, while honorable, that logic is absolutely flawed.

It's not like he fell off a horse. He got hurt pitching for his team. It happens all the time and a team is fully aware that that's a risk they take on when they sign a pitcher (which, in fact, keeps them from making more ridiculous money). He'd be gettng paid for what he's already in good faith given to his team, and his agent and the union and his agent should have reminded him of that... loudly.

[metirish]

Yeah , when you think about it then it hardly makes sense, if he's injured would the insurance pick up the tab, he gets paid and the Royals get relief? , or is that only if the doctors say he can't play anymore? How does that work , IIRC when Mo Vaughn went down didn't the insurance pick it up?

[Benjamin Grimm]

Mo Vaughn was covered by an insurance policy, but I think I read that these insurance policies on athlete contracts have become much more difficult, if not impossible, to get. The salaries have been getting higher and higher, and the risk of injury hasn't gotten any less. I think the premiums got so high that the prices were prohibitive.

[metirish]

One could conclude that Gil Meche is a proper eegit then.

You know someone will ask Ollie if he'll do the same.......not helping the team and all that.

[Ceetar]

metirish wrote: One could conclude that Gil Meche is a proper eegit then. You know someone will ask Ollie if he'll do the same.......not helping the team and all that.

Except despite what people like to think, Ollie does in fact WANT to pitch and get better.

[Frayed Knot]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Mo Vaughn was covered by an insurance policy, but I think I read that these insurance policies on athlete contracts have become much more difficult, if not impossible, to get. The salaries have been getting higher and higher, and the risk of injury hasn't gotten any less. I think the premiums got so high that the prices were prohibitive.

This.

Insurance policies don't just come automatically with the signing, they have to be purchased separately and they're expensive. Pitchers, in particular, are very hard to insure and the final year of a deal is almost never covered. What teams are trying to avoid is taking the huge hit of someone getting injured near the beginning of a deal and being unable to play anymore so they purchase a policy to cover themselves in case of that event. But by the last year of a deal all you're out is the one year's salary so it's not worth paying a significant portion of that final year's pay just to cover that final season.

What Meche is entitled to, of course, is his agreed-upon salary. To get it he'd likely have to remain a member of the team and probably undergo an operation and rehab as if he were working toward being a viable ML hurler again. Sounds like he simply doesn't want to go through the motions of doing that while he sticks KC with the bill.
I don't think that's the choice I'd make in that position but I also don't already have set-for-life money and that we have here a situation where the two sides aren't treating each other like enemies to be gored at any opportunity isn't such a bad sign.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

I think Mark McGwire walked away from a size-able amount of cash when he retired, too.

[Benjamin Grimm]

We're not here to talk about the past.

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: We're not here to talk about the past.

LOL......good of you to inject some humor into the thread

[Ceetar]

metsguyinmichigan wrote: I think Mark McGwire walked away from a size-able amount of cash when he retired, too.

McGwire was still kind of a legend at the time. He probably imagined he'd still be earning from them in some capacity (And he is now after all)

Is it always said that the retirement line is when you no longer want to put up the massive effort of preparation required to be a successful player? Just add 12 million (or really 6 or whatever it becomes after taxes) to the incentive.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Frayed Knot wrote: I don't think that's the choice I'd make in that position but I also don't already have set-for-life money and that we have here a situation where the two sides aren't treating each other like enemies to be gored at any opportunity isn't such a bad sign.

I'm certain I haven't suggested anything like that.

[Guest themetfairy]

metsguyinmichigan wrote: I think Mark McGwire walked away from a size-able amount of cash when he retired, too.

Not only did he walk away from cash when he retired, but he gave up an opportunity to re-negotiate his contract after the 1998 or 1999 season.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: We're not here to talk about the past.

Brilliant!!!!!

[metirish]

themetfairy wrote: metsguyinmichigan wrote: I think Mark McGwire walked away from a size-able amount of cash when he retired, too. Not only did he walk away from cash when he retired, but he gave up an opportunity to re-negotiate his contract after the 1998 or 1999 season.

Mark McGwire - American Hero

[Guest themetfairy]

metirish wrote: themetfairy wrote: metsguyinmichigan wrote: I think Mark McGwire walked away from a size-able amount of cash when he retired, too. Not only did he walk away from cash when he retired, but he gave up an opportunity to re-negotiate his contract after the 1998 or 1999 season. Mark McGwire - American Hero

I'm not going that far. He fucked up big time with the roids.

But he's not The Devil either; he handled himself with class for the most part.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Tyler Kepner in the Times bats blog:

Gil Meche�s Legacy By TYLER KEPNER Lou Piniella was the Seattle Mariners manager in the summer of 1999, when Catfish Hunter died. Piniella took leave from the team to attend Hunter�s funeral in North Carolina, and while he was there, he asked his old teammate Ron Guidry about a 20-year-old pitcher on Piniella�s staff. The pitcher was Gil Meche, who shared his hometown, Lafayette, La., with Guidry. When Meche was in high school, he played against a team coached by Guidry, who gave Piniella a positive report. �He remembered that he was very calm and collected, that he had poise and that he had a pretty good arm,� Piniella said then. �I told him, �Well, Ron, we basically have seen the same thing here.� � I covered the 1999 Mariners beat for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and I wish I remembered more about Meche. He was young and quiet, tall and lean, with an exploding fastball, and he won half of the 16 games he pitched in the second half of that rookie season. From that point on, Meche lost more games than he won, and his career statistics are ordinary: 83-82 with a 4.49 earned run average. Until last week, he was most noted for signing a bloated five-year, $55 million contract with the Kansas City Royals. Now he has a much different legacy. As you�ve probably heard, Meche retired last week, giving back his $12 million salary for 2011. No other Royal makes more than $4 million, and I had planned to write about Meche this spring, to ask how he was coping with that role, of a reliever with a bum shoulder, just hanging on. It turns out, of course, that Meche wanted no part of that. With a week to reflect on his decision, Meche spoke earnestly and candidly for almost an hour over the phone on Tuesday. �When you don�t want to play ball, it�s no use,� he said. �If it�s not in my heart to keep playing, to keep pushing to pitch, I had to do what I had to do. Next month may be a funny feeling from what I�m used to, but I�m really content with it. �It got to the point where I wasn�t going to lie to myself and say, �I�m going to be healthy, I�m ready to roll, I can�t wait to get going.� None of those things were true. Last year when I left for Kansas City, I said all those things, and I thought I�d be able to do it. Once I got home after the season, I just didn�t have it in my heart to keep playing. I think I did the right thing with the feeling I was having about pitching. It wasn�t fair to the team or my teammates to go back.� Meche is only 32, but he turned pro at 17 and has spent nearly half his life in the game. He understands that the only way to enjoy the grind is to fully invest yourself in it � body, mind, spirit. He has made enough money not to need the $12 million. And he has always been headstrong. Bryan Price, the Cincinnati Reds� pitching coach, was the Mariners� minor league coordinator when Meche was a prospect. Meche came into his own at Class A Wisconsin in 1998, but he told his pitching coach that he did not want to go to instructional league. Price was summoned to change his mind. �I sat down with Gil and said, �I heard you don�t want to go,�� Price said. �He said, �I really don�t.� I said, �You mind telling me why?� He said he just felt like it had been a long year, he had thrown a lot of innings, and he didn�t see the benefit. �I laid it on him pretty thick: how badly we wanted him there, how he could go and improve, how he was a high-risk draft choice for us and he had an obligation. I told him to think about it and call me back tomorrow. He still wouldn�t go. �At the time, that was looked at as a negative. However, you need a certain amount of that. You need to get to a point where you know what�s best for you, and Gil was already there. I think his decision in Kansas City sheds a positive light on that attitude. He�s stubborn and willing to stand on principle.� Meche�s time in Seattle included two shoulder surgeries that cost him two seasons. Doctors told him last year that the only way he could ever be a starter again was to have another shoulder operation. He would not do that again. Meche, who is divorced, also wanted to spend more time with family � his three children, yes, as well as his parents and sisters and extended family in Louisiana. He is living in an R.V. at a campground while he looks for a new home in Louisiana, where he plans to settle for good. �I want to get back to what I remember as a kid, the way of life here in Louisiana,� Meche said. �We tend to think we live a little differently down here. It�s a lot of culture, a lot of French culture. Everywhere I�ve been in the country, for some reason, this is the place I can�t get away from.� He can be there whenever he wants now, free of the baseball life and happy. As for the $12 million, the Royals have no plans to rush out and spend it. They are building carefully � Baseball America just gave their farm system the No. 1 ranking in baseball � and General Manager Dayton Moore said he would not spend the money just to spend it. When that happens (such as the Pirates� acquisition of Matt Morris in 2007), it usually backfires. �We�ll continue to stay aggressive internationally, we�ll continue to stay aggressive in the draft,� Moore said. �It gives us flexibility moving forward with free agents or deals that make sense.�

[metirish]

It occurs to me that I can't picture Meche in my mind, no idea what he looks like....

[Guest Edgy DC]

Athletic and chin-fuzzy:

[Guest attgig]

having already been through 2 surgeries, i guess he decided no more. I figure the real honorable thing for a 32 year old to do would be to go through one more surgery, rehab well, then sign for a really really cheap contract with the royals to be a reliever to 'pay back' the 12 million he earned.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Or make a deal with the Royals to send that $12 mill --- or at least part of it --- tax-free to help rebuild damaged communitites in Lousiana.

[batmagadanleadoff]

There's honor on both sides here.

What about the Royals honor? I'd like for the Royals to insist on honoring the remainder of Meche's contract. The Royals, like any other team, assume the risk that the player under a guaranteed contract might sustain a career-ending injury before the contract terminates. It's business as usual. They guaranteed Meche's contract -- otherwise, Meche's contract would've been worth more. Otherwise, Meche might've made more money for the past seasons. The Royals should tell Meche that he's a young kid who's not thinking sensibly or clearly, and that there's a strong chance that he'll regret this decision in the future. That's the honorable thing to do.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Totally agreed.

Apparently, by opting out of surgery and rehab, he's giving them this out. I'd want my shoulder in shape simply to live the rest of my life.