Jose Reyes, Yes Jose Reyes, Is The Mets Nominee For The 2018 MLBPA Man Of The Year Award
Yahoo- The Major League Baseball Players Association announced Friday each team’s top vote-getter for the 2018 Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award, an award dedicated to singling out who players “most respect based on his leadership on the field and in the community.”
The leading vote-getter from the New York Mets raised a few eyebrows: It’s Jose Reyes, who was suspended 51 games in 2016 for violating the league’s domestic violence policy, as their nominee. Reyes was suspended for allegedly grabbing his wife by the throat and shoving her into a glass door at a hotel in Maui in 2015. Reyes never faced criminal charges for the incident, but his wife’s injuries were bad enough that she was taken to the emergency room.
I think we can cuncel da Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award after this story came out. Allowing a guy who was suspended only two (2) years ago for violating the domestic violence policy to be a team’s nominees is about as tone deaf as it gets.
Now I’m not saying Jose Reyes couldn’t change and have become a better person over the last few years. Maybe he has or will donate some time and money with charities that help women that have been abused. But the blurb about why he was nominated didn’t mention any charities or good causes like most of the other players.
In his 16th season, Jose earned the respect of his teammates with the professionalism he demonstrated in transitioning from everyday player to role player. He took on the responsibility of mentoring young players, including the Mets’ promising young shortstop Amed Rosario.
Jose Reyes got nominated for the Man of the Year Award simply because he didn’t bitch when he was sent to the bench and was nice to his teammates? We officially live in Crazyland. The only reason Jose Reyes has a job in baseball is because he was once beloved in Queens and the Mets were the only team willing to give him a second shot. Reyes better have been a good guy while becoming a bench player because he was flaming hot garbage whenever he did take the field with splits of .189/.260/.320 in 228 plate appearances. Every time Jose Reyes was in the lineup, #MetsTwitter would explode with anger and rage for him being an automatic out over those more talented younger guys that may actually have a future with the team. The only reason I wasn’t shocked Reyes even got a contract this year is because the Wilpons are always looking to cut corners (see: Starting Jose Reyes at third for a good chunk of last season) to field a team that may get fans out to the ballpark.
However, the biggest upset in all this? It wasn’t the Mets who actually fucked it up. It was the Players Association as a whole!
It is worth noting that it wasn’t the New York Mets players voting among themselves to pick Reyes as their nominee for the Marvin Miller Award. Rather, it was a league-wide vote in which Reyes received more votes than any other player on the Mets.
So this could simply be a function of no other players on the Mets receiving a significant amount of votes, opening the door for some of Reyes’ friends to vote him up.
So maybe the Mets aren’t the most idiotic franchise on the planet? Well that is probably still the case. But maybe there truly is something in the cosmos causes them to be linked to the most embarrassing, ridiculous, mind-blowing stories in baseball history even when it wasn’t all their fault. If you count the votes and see Jose Reyes is the winner for the Mets nomination, you move to whoever came in 2nd on the list and just announce the wrong name like Warren Beatty at the Oscars. Do the Mets have that many assholes on their team that they couldn’t find one player that was a decent teammate without a domestic abuse suspension on his resume? Couldn’t they have just fudged the vote and given it to literally ANY OTHER PLAYER OTHER THAN JOSE REYES (and Jeurys Familia if he was even eligible as a Met)? Shit, if you are honoring a player that is walking away from the game, always smiling, and was a great teammate, why don’t you just nominate David Wright because only literally the worst people in the world don’t like David Wright. Or give it to Mr. Met for not flipping off any fans on camera this season. What a fucking joke, just like the Mets franchise.