In the Doghouse: Carlos Gomez

Carlos Gomez is, quite simply, the dumbest player I have ever had the pleasure to watch in my many years following baseball. And the really sad thing is, I don't think it can be attributed to "youth." It's Gomez' stupidity and lack of baseball instinct that puts him in The Doghouse with no forseeable end to this dubious honor. In all fairness to Gomez, he really should not be in the major leagues, but Ron Gardenhire and Bill Smith have the fans in mind for this one, as they feel that the disastrous Johan Santana trade would perhaps look less bad if one of the players was on the 25-man roster. Unfortunately for Gomez and the Twins, he's a Double-A player at best, and he hurts the team far more than he helps them. Gomez certainly has desirable attributes that you want out of a ballplayer: he plays pretty good defense and he is fast. Now the defense is above average, for sure (though he's not immune to the defensive lapse, i.e. overthrowing cut-off men, taking horrid angles at balls in the gap). The speed, however, is one thing that Gomez has not harnessed. For how much speed he does possess, he negates it by being a terrible baserunner. He has no instincts on which he can get good leads of the basepaths and gets terrible jumps off of the pitchers. No doubt he doesn't have much in-game experience at gaining leads off pitchers because, as we fans know all too well, Gomez has a hard time even getting on base in the first place. Gomez at the plate is kind of like the dry heaves; you're so sick to your stomach that you can't throw up, even if you want to. He's kind of like a Latino version of Denny Hocking, in that he swings at balls way out of the strike zone and looks at fastballs right down the middle. You can tell that Joe Vavra and the regime have told him to take more pitches this season, as last season he was swinging out of his shoes in every single at-bat. This is what Gomez means to me: if the Twins are down by a run in the late innings and the tying run is on third base with one out, Gomez is the last hitter I want at the plate. I'd rather have a pitcher at the plate -- Kevin Slowey, Nick Blackburn, Joe Nathan, hell, even Nick Punto. Gomez folds in the clutch like it's nobody's business, and it's the listless hitting approach and non-existent instincts that make him a Doghouse Denizen for life.