No GM or front office executive would answer the question, and the crux of what a scout would say is, "He isn't pitching well and I can see him not being on the postseason roster" [which would be accurate, because Harang probably won't be on the postaseason roster].
David, you know Cafardo enough to understand that this guy is the master of the unnamed quote. All he had to do is call his buddy Sabean, promise to keep it anonymous, and we have a quote on Harang. He does it every, single week. And while it's gutless and boring, at least it requires a bit of work. To me this whole column seemed like Cafardo look at the stats sheet on Friday and saying, "This guy had a good year, this guy had a bad year and whoa! where did this guy come from?" The entire league batting and pitching lines were on the page prior to the Baseball Notes, any one of his readers could have done the exact same thing. There wasn't any explanations on why guys did well, bad or came out of no where.
I understand that everyone needs a break now and then, but this may not have been the best weekend for that break. It's the end of the year, the playoffs begin tomorrow he couldn't have written a little preview about every team? One of the clubs (his favorite team BTW) is at Fenway Park. He couldn't have gotten ahold of Girardi or Pettitte or Jeter and asked a few questions? I'm sure that Texas, Minnesota and Tampa sent a boatload of scouts to watch the Yanks play, nothing from them?
And if he didn't feel doing a quick preview, how about an update on the Giants/Padres/Braves slugfest in the National League? The dude is in Sabean's hip pocket, nothing from him? Jed Hoyer is the Padres GM, he must have a relationship there plus that's an awesome Boston angle to cover. And how about Bobby Cox, this is is his last year (which he's written about no less than eight times this summer) what's this like for him? It's a pretty interesting situation, wouldn't you agree?
There's an interesting situation happening in Seattle with GM Jack Zduriencik getting a vote of confidence from his owner because of the Josh Lueke situation. One of the prospects that the Rangers gave to the M's for Cliff Lee and this also brought the firing of the Mariners' head of scouting. That would be an interesting piece to write about.
The bottom line is this, Nick Cafardo is probably the nicest guy in the world--I have no problems with him personally (mostly because I don't know him). But the issues I have with him are three-fold:
1. His journalistic/reporter instincts stink. In the age of the Internet, if you're a reporter, you better be sure that you can grab readers' attentions, or you're sunk. I think that the reason most of us haven't jumped ship is because this is such an ingrained part of our Sunday rituals, that it would be hard. But the Globe isn't getting new readers with this tripe and I bet that they're losing a lot of folks who aren't as invested as us.
2. His writing is not very good. There are a lot of mistakes that a copy editor should catch, but doesn't for one reason or another.
3. He's using old-fashioned metrics as a way of critical thinking. Listen, there are a lot of times when I say "Wow, look at that guy's batting average!" or "He's got a good Win/Loss record." That's because that's how I was brought up and 90% of the time I move on from those things after my initial look. Cafardo doesn't and he really needs to. Otherwise his paper isss at risk of simply not being taken seriously. The Globe advertises Cafardo as an "expert", but how can he be an expert if he thinks pitchers are good based on wins and losses and hitters are good based on batting average? It would be like going to a doctor and getting a prescription for leeches when you have a migraine.