Andruw Jones slides even further toward irrelevancy

Latest news on Andruw Jones I found is this nugget that he quit the winter ball team he was playing for. Believe it or not, he was apparently hitting only a woeful .148 during his time there. Of course, this comes after the recent announcement from the Dodgers that they had agreed to release him in exchange for Andruw agreeing to defer a portion of his salary. Now, I don't have the time nor energy to do a lot of digging into this, but it seems to me that was basically the Dodgers cutting a player for poor performance. Where is the benefit to Andruw? He still had (I think) around $12 million left on his contract. He's not going to that anywhere else next year for sure. The only reason I could see is that he really didn't want to be playing in Los Angeles. I don't believe that either though, because there is no way he'd give up $10 million dollars just to try to sign with another team.

Of course, one option for Andruw may be re-signing with the Braves. Not really sure what to think of this one. On one hand, Andruw has just shown nothing over the past two years to even resemble a major league player. Two years ago for the Braves he was automatic out in the middle of the lineup, which of course was impossible to get around. On the other hand, the drop in his production has been so precipitous it makes you wonder if there's any fix out there. I mean, we all know he was productive at one point. What's to say he can't be productive again? He's only 31 yrs old at this point and hit 51 HR's in 2005. Was it just the pressure of the free agent year in 2007 that led to the dropoff? Was it just poor conditioning? Those are things that can be fixed if he puts his mind to it. My guess, which I haven't read anywhere else, is that maybe Andruw has some serious mental issues going on, like depression or related illness. There doesn't appear to be any physical reason, and I can't believe that he's not a competitive enough person to put 100% effort into his career at this point.

I tend to agree with Dave O'Brien writing for the AJC who believes re-signing Andruw to a small deal with incentives would be a good idea. Give him another chance and let's see how it works out. If he truly wants to keep playing of course. It wouldn't surprise me at this point if he considered early retirement.

What happened Andruw?

When he was with the Braves, Andruw Jones without a doubt earned a reputation as one of the best centerfielders in the game. Then, he got to the end of his contract and seemingly lost his ability to make contact with the ball and even some of his range in the outfield. Now that he's with the Dodgers, he doesn't exactly have the patience of the fans and media as he did in Atlanta whenever he had a slow start. That is, if you consider the following article by T.J. Simers as an good reflection of the feelings of the rest of LA:

"As for his play on the field, the Tubbo has one home run, and so far it looks as if he has only warning-track power, which suggests he has lost something.
"If you think that's what I've got, warning-track power, then write it down," Jones said, and it always helps when I have a player's permission to criticize him. "I lost my power, I suck, I should retire."
"I hope you're not waiting for me to disagree with you," I said.
Then Jones went out, and struck out on three pitches in his first appearance at the plate. I wonder if he cared.

Hard to disagree with Simers, but as a former Andruw fan, I fear the negative press may hinder his chances of breaking out of his slump. I don't think any writer in Atlanta ever wrote such a negative article about any athlete. Not sure why Simers felt the need to make it personal between he and Andruw. Just an ugly situation that may get uglier soon.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/baseball/mlb/dodgers/la-sp-simers11-2008may11,0,7611597,full.column