How a players character impacts their value

While watching the Carlos Zambrano show this week on Sports Center and Baseball Tonight, I began to think about players coming up who have had character issues and how they were dealt with. Jim Bowden, former GM of several MLB clubs was discussing Elijah Dukes and what his philosophy is regarding players who cause more issues than they solve. It is incredibly difficult to just boot a player off of your roster when they have a ton of natural talent. After all, your role as the GM of a club is to make it win and talent ultimately wins championships.

Bowden calmly stated how he would have handled the Zambrano situation if he were running the Cubs by stating "I would cut him". An $18 million dollar per year player being let go with nothing of value gained whatsoever.. I guess the economy isn't all that bad, especially if you're a member of the Ricketts family. Now these are the obvious situations where a player is clearly regressing in pure talent, and his attitude (previously accepted) no longer has a place on the team because his value just isn't there to justify the aggravation. But what about guys like Hanley Ramirez and Alex Rios? What about guys like Colby Rasmus and Milton Bradley? These are the types of things that managers deal with that we only see on occasion unless it translates onto the field performance.

Although all of those players have their own set of issues, it's widely known that some type of character problems have arisen but their natural talent and/or contracts keep them around. Tony LaRussa ran Rasmus out of town to get the command-less Edwin Jackson and some other scrap-heap pieces. Alex Rios was a waiver claim that the White Sox gave up nothing for, but also assumed the massive deal he had in place. He has shown flashes of not playing hard and feeling like he has somewhere better to be despite enormous talent.

Bradley was very talented. A switch-hitter who could hit for power and some average and ran pretty well in his prime. However anybody who watched Bradley can tell you how volatile his emotions were and still are. Then there's Hanley Ramirez. This guy has more talent than all of those players previously named, but shows a general lack of interest in baseball on a fairly consistent basis. There's no doubt Hall of Fame ability shooting from his veins, but it won't be reached and I'm fairly certain about that.

The bottom line is that some guys can be taught. Some just get it one day and realize that this is a short life, and an even shorter playing career. Some guys just don't ever get it, and they're often gone before we can say "man, that guy had all the ability, but...".