You’re all wrong! Cairo is awesome!

“Cairo’s numbers don’t measure his value”
subhead: Utilityman gets job done off bench even if stats say otherwise

Great headline, there, by the way. I’d love if my job performance was evaluated like that.
“Derek, you failed to do any of the tasks assigned to you all year.”
“Sure, but I got the job done in other ways. I made coffee in the morning, I always make sure the printer has paper on it, I volunteer to drive to lunch every day…”

Because right now, the actual doing-my-job part of the job is the hard part. I’d love to get paid for the peripherals.

TORONTO — If performance was always judged strictly on numbers, then it’s likely Miguel Cairo would no longer have a place in the Major Leagues.

He doesn’t — he plays for the Mariners.

But after listening to Mariners manager John McLaren rave about the 34-year-old, it becomes a little bit easier to understand where Cairo’s true value lies. He can play all four infield positions as well as the corner outfield spots and regardless of where he’s slotted into the lineup, McLaren knows what type of performance he’s going to get.

None?

Isn’t that exactly what they’re supposed to get out of Bloomquist?

“Stats are not what he’s all about,” McLaren said. “He has made plays defensively your best first baseman in the league would be hard to duplicate. He does the little things. Moves runners, he can squeeze, hit-and-run. I’ve always admired him.”

Um, assuming that second sentence is just clumsy and not a particularly ribald innuendo… no. He doesn’t move runners over. And as much as I’m a huge fan of the suicide squeeze and think it’s woefully underused, that doesn’t a player make.

So now we have two “super utility” guys, full of scrap and awesome little thing skills, and the team still can’t score runs, pitch, or play defense. I’m all for looking at the bright side, but could we maybe laud Felix or Ichiro or one of the players that has actually contributed to the team’s success?

He made a good defensive play and laid down a bunt. You could (and yes, this is frequently done) figure out how to make any player look good by citing a couple well-chosen examples. On Tuesday, they “sparked a rally” or “kept the pressure on” with a single, and their take-three-steps-and-fall catch becomes a “diving grab that saved a double” or whatnot.

Cairo is Bloomquist Lite. That as McLaren’s guy he seems to have eclipsed Bloomquist is sad, funny, and a terrible commentary on the state of the team.

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