Chronicles of the Lads

THE BIGGEST IDIOT EVER?
Jose Guillen is angry!

"I don't know how many times I've been hit, and there's no retaliation; I don't know how many times Vladdy has been hit, and nobody … does anything," the Black Knight tells the LA Times.

Um, say what?

Last night, your starting pitcher and manager got ejected for "retaliation" -- even though the pitch missed the batter (big gaffe by the home plate umpire there). What, does Guillen insist we hit the guy square?

And, by the way, brainiac, Vlad has been hit a grand total of twice -- one of which was followed up by Bartolo Colon plunking Tino Martinez in an obvious retaliatory move. This was, in fact, the highlight of Colon's only good start since April 16.

So Guillen is factually wrong, and the other players don't like it. Kudos to Mike Scioscia, who says, "Here's our philosophy — we pitch inside aggressively to get outs. If we think guys are throwing at us [deliberately] I will take it up with the other manager and settle it .... but there is no room in this game for bean balls."

Ace Washburn and Troy Percival also have tempered and sane comments.

Anyway, Guillen is acting like a little baby, and it falls to Scioscia to get him in line. I think that Guillen has proved he can be a tremendous player, if so focused. Could this be the sort of thing that turns him into an unproductive malcontent?

I have confidence in Scioscia making this work. Dealing with players appears his strongest suit as a manager, and, ultimately, getting a guy like Guillen to play to his potential is far more important than running us into stupid outs once a game (and what the hell was that stupid double steal of home thing?).

And once he straightens out Guillen, I hope he teaches Bengie and Amezaga how to run damn rundown.