An Open Letter to Manny Acta RE: Third Base

Dear Manny,

I’m sure you’ve never heard of me, but I feel like I’ve gotten to know you pretty well over the past 7 months or so of baseball. For the most part, you’ve done an OK job with what you’ve had, which is admittedly not much, and it’s gotten worse with the injury to Carlos Santana and the trades of guys like Jake Westbrook, Austin Kearns, Russell Branyan, and for some reason, Jhonny Peralta.

However, since all this went down, you’ve looked like a cartoon character falling down a canyon in terms of some of the moves and lineups you’ve thrown out there.

Honestly, I can forgive a lot of it, but a couple days ago I made some suggestions on how to fix this club for the rest of 2010. You’ve pretty much ignored me, so I’m sending this letter in hopes that you’ll listen to me on one of them.

I see in your lineup today you’re starting Jayson Nix again at third base. I completely disagree that he’s your best option at third base, because seeing as none of the three-headed monster that is Nimartuena (Nix, Andy Marte, and Luis Valbuena) can hit, you probably should go with the guy that’s going to suck the least at third defensively. And well, seeing as neither Nix nor Valbuena are really third basemen, I still don’t understand why you don’t let Marte play his way out of baseball. What’s the harm, you guys lose 100 games?

But I digress, as I usually do when I’m talking about El Gato. What I wanted to say is that I’m really proud of you because you seem to have settled on Nix as your sacrificial lamb from the Hot Corner From Hell. I think that’s progress. None of those guys were able to get in any kind of rhythm when you were shuffling them in and out of the lineup. I still hope balls are hit to the right side of the infield every time, but hey, at least I know who’s gonna end up booting the ball if you have a regular third baseman, even if he isn’t really a third baseman. I mean, the Indians got lucky before with Casey F-in Blake. Why can’t you get lucky with Jayson Nix?

So I’ll be at the ballpark tonight, watching reliever Justin Masterson make his 26th spot start of the year. It’s not going to be pretty, but at least I’ll know who’s on third. Thanks, Manny.

Take care,

-Ed Carroll

P.S. Heard you’re a fan of Birdman. I can loan you some Harvey Birdman DVDs if you want to check it out. Very funny stuff. Let me know.