Where in the World is David Goode?
Written by Mike Cuno, The Nevada Sagebrush
August 18, 2013: Tempe, AZ – The most famously overpriced baseball player in PEBA history is on waivers. David Goode himself is rumored to be in hiding. Or held hostage. Or dead.
But there’s a problem: His name continues to appear in the box score. What gives? Have the Reno Tenpinners, in a desperate move to free themselves from the extraordinary burden of Goode’s 12 million dollar salary, replaced him with a lookalike double? Has he been abducted? Or murdered?
That’s mere speculation, of course, but here’s what we know: The Tenpinners, apparently as fed up with Goode’s lousy performance as his previous employers, Tempe and Yuma, placed David on waivers on August 11th. With good reason: The man simply refuses to produce!
Goode has scored eight runs and driven in six for a grand total of 14 runs produced, roughly 3.5% of the Tenpinners’ 394 runs this season. Yet his salary is nearly equal to the sum of all the other Reno major leaguers combined! The team’s player payroll is $25.8 million, $12.4 of which goes to Goode alone. A player responsible for half the team’s salary budget ought to be producing nearly half their runs, right? Reno’s GM is wisely trying to dump the good-less Goode, but no one’s biting.
However, playing against Canton on August 10th, David had a very un-Goode day, going 3-for-5 with a double and a homer, scoring a pair and driving in a pair. A memorable day for a guy hitting .221, and how was he rewarded? The club put him on waivers the very next day!
Now, with Goode having just one more day left on the waiver list, no one in the PEBAverse has shown any interest in the King of Unproductivity. Is that because the Tenpinners have already figured out how to slay David, their Goliath of Green?
No one is saying. Reliable reports from Yuma indicate the Bulldozers have hired another detective (what is it with Yuma and detectives?) to get to the bottom of this whole David Goode mess. Why Yuma? Because they negotiated Goode’s outrageous six-year contract for $12 million a year? Could be. Will a body be waiting at the bottom of the mess for their new detective? Or will this whole house of cards collapse when it turns out David hasn’t gone missing, there is no stand-in, no conspiracy, and David’s been playing every day just like the box score says?