In defense of Matsui, he was very good in Japan. VERY good. Not a world-beater, but very good. I'm willing to agree that they screwed it up, and they probably shouldn't have screwed with Reyes at all, but it wasn't a disaster at the time. This guy was going to come here, play every day (which he did in Japan), hit a handful of home runs (which he did in Japan, although we expected less than he hit there), steal bases (which he did in Japan), and be a catalyst (which he was in Japan). It sucks that it didn't work out, but it was not a complete disaster until recently. I believe most of the baseball pundits -- and a lot of us, IIRC -- figured him to have a solid year this year, now that he knew the league a little better. Now that he's hurt, and now that it's clear that he hasn't become the player we'd hoped, it looks ugly.I felt much more confident with Matsui's resume coming into 2004 than I would have with Marco Scutaro, or Ty Wigginton, or some random prospect from the Pirates who nobody had heard of until he arrived here. Besides, he was only 28! He's still not even 30! He's supposed to be in the prime of his career, and we didn't know that he would fall apart when he was signed.