Knights Welcome Kinder, Gentler Era Of Self-Immolation

Fundamentals will be stressed. Lip service will be paid to pitching and defense. Position players who can defend but cannot turn around a Livan Hernandez fastball will be eyed covetously.

Baseball franchises enduring a regime change have rattled off these tenets for time immemorial—well, for at least a good 50 years before Jamie Moyer's birth. Yet all flagging clubs turn to and find comfort in these themes, citing them as if they're on the verge of cracking a long-indecipherable code.

So after a preposterously long lead-in, we come to this item: New York today welcomed aboard general manager Matt Eddy in a press conference held in the Knights' dingy, subterranean media room—complete with Wi-Fi access since May 11, 2010!

"Our standing in the Less Filling division is unacceptable," Eddy said. "With the rotation we're running out there—Josh Johnson, Jon Lester, Matt Cain, Gavin Floyd and Joe Saunders . . . well, maybe not Saunders—we should be at least a .500 club, if not challengers to the Pocono throne

"If things continue along these lines, then changes will be made," Eddy warned ominously, eliciting snickers from some of the assembled Knights players, a group that included Cristian Guzman, Jason Varitek and Ty Wigginton. Those well-seasoned vets know only too well that the Knights' front office has no recourse to counter their putrid play. Trade them? Perhaps, if this were 2005.

Eddy then went on to openly petition for a "major league-caliber shortstop or reasonable facsimile," showing open disdain for Guzman and Julio Lugo, a pair of long-in-the-tooth shortstops who can manage a range rating no better than 4. The GM indicated that light-hitting Clint Barmes, a fine defensive second baseman who appears stretched when playing across the bag, would assume everyday ownership of the shortstop position, at least for the time being.

"We've seen the positive effect that a strong defense can have on a team's morale, not to mention its run differential," Eddy said. "Fans of the Seattle Mariners (of the rival American League) are positively brimming with delight now that they've been subjected to an endless succession of 2-1 defeats. That's what we're trying to do here."