Alfonso Soriano is a wealthy man. The Chicago Cubs gave him an eight-year contract four years ago, which pays him $18 million per season. Without commenting on the wisdom of the deal, it’s fair to say that it came with certain expectations that Soriano has not lived up to.
After a miserable 2009 season, Soriano was on his way to a fine rebound year in 2010 – until June, that is. And he’s got some interesting theories on why he’s struggling.
However, it’s been a struggle for Soriano since May. He was 4-for-18 on the road trip. He has 1 home run in August. He hit .225 in July, .234 in June and .308 in May.
“Players, to have a good year, have to have a good team,” Soriano said. “It’s very hard to have a good year when you don’t have a good team.
“You see the Cincinnati Reds. Everybody’s doing good because they are in first place. If you see us, nobody’s doing good because we are in fifth place. St. Louis has guys who are having a very good year because they are in first place, too.
“I think that’s the key. If we have a very good team, everybody can have a good year.” Daily Herald.
I’ll go ahead and give Soriano the benefit of the doubt, and assume that he didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Because it sounded like he’s saying his numbers are down because he’s stuck on a crappy team – and boy would that be a crummy thing to say.
Without getting into a chicken-or-the-egg style debate about individual good seasons and team good seasons (though it seems pretty obvious that teams have good seasons because of player good seasons, and not the other way around), Soriano should probably rethink his position. As noted in the article, he hasn’t hit in over two months, and you’d think he’d at least be good at saying the right things by now.
But then again, Soriano’s a really rich guy these days. It’s not like he’s got much to play for this season, right?