Point to this: Frustration with Juan Uribe is a real pain
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So apparently Juan Uribe pointed and said, ‘Here.’ And the Dodgers gave him a shot.
What else could they do?
You have the feeling if he’d pointed to his big toe, they would have given him some cortisone there.
Uribe has been out almost a month now with what an MRI identified as a strained left hip. That should have healed by now, so they sent him to more specialists -- though apparently not a cardiologist -- and gave him another MRI on Monday.
This one showed the hip had healed, but Uribe pointed and said, ‘Lower.’ So they gave him a shot in his abdominal region. Any lower and there’s real trouble.
Despite the hip flexor area having healed, Uribe said he is still in pain when he runs, as opposed to the rest of us, who are in pain when he plays.
If a player says he’s hurt you have no choice but to accept that he is actually hurting. There have been gads of instances when this was not true, but also plenty of times when you were suspicious, only for that player to later to go under the knife. Assuming that proves anything.
So Uribe, 32, has pain when he runs. OK. The frustration level -- and I think you can rightly assume there’s plenty on the team’s end, too -- is made more rampant by his rotund frame and the fact that he’s been a major bomb when playing.
But Uribe has always been something of a round boy; the real annoyance is that when he has played he’s batted .204 with four home runs and 28 RBI. He has a ridiculously low .292 slugging percentage (his career average is .423). Uribe told The Times’ Dylan Hernandez shortly before injuring his hip: ‘I’m not happy with how I’ve played. I haven’t played the way I wanted to play. I haven’t helped the team the way I would have liked. When you come to a new team, this isn’t what you want to happen.’
Ah, something we can all agree on.
The best thing Uribe actually brought to the Dodgers was versatile defense. He was signed to play second, but largely due to Casey Blake’s injuries has played 59 of his 81 games on the field at third.
But the Dodgers didn’t bring him in primarily for his defensive skills, but to add some pop and possibly protection for Matt Kemp in the lineup.
The Dodgers signed him for three years and $21 million. There’s more than two years of Uribe remaining. That’s a lot of potential pain left, for the Dodgers.
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-- Steve Dilbeck