Because of an endorsement by manager Don Wakamatsu, Seattle has signed veteran right-hander Jamey Wright. There doesn’t seem to be much to say about the 35-year old pitcher. Somehow, despite 1,723 big league innings, Wright lacks a FanGraphs page. He has struggled the last few years and is barely holding onto a major league career. That career has been composed of short hops around major league baseball, likely facilitated through good personal relationships with irrational managers like Wakamatsu.
↵Wright is living the dream: He is so low profile he avoids much bad press; he has never been very good; he has 15 season under his belt and so is presumably rich, and until the day he is forced into early retirement, plays baseball for a living. It is the kind of career that can’t help but inspire a bit of resentment. It is one thing when a player barely skirts above replacement level, but does so and so continues his career. It’s quite another thing when a player probably isn’t better than literally thousands of career minor leaguers, but keeps turning up.
↵That makes Wright the face of an inefficient system that rewards personal connections and ignores actual ability. Whatever you do, career or avocation, you likely have suffered from such a system. Wright is making it work for him, and for that I do not blame him. But once Wright eventually screws the pooch, it is going to reignite that resentment and likely bring even more heat down on Don Wakamatsu.