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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2007		Joe McEwing continues to hang around on the off chance that he`ll recapture some of he love that`s being given to the other Bloomquist types.
2005		He's willing to play a lot of positions. He's popular. He has nothing to do with reality television. It's not much, but it keeps him employed. McEwing doesn't do enough with the bat, glove or legs to help a team win, and is an extreme example of the preference for familiar mediocrity within the baseball industry. Just 32, he'll be around for a while.
2003		A standard-issue utility man, which means you shouldn’t get too bent out of shape if he doesn’t hit; his playing time is far too sporadic to let you form much of a judgment. He’s a 25th man, and you know what they say, he’s scrappier than a bulldog. Or a really angry goat. One that’s eaten hot chili peppers.
2002		After a poor 2000, McEwing reestablished himself as a major-league utility player in 2001. His flexibility and hustle will help him maintain a spot on the roster in 2002. His playing time will be determined by the health of better players.
2001		The plight of players without secondary skills is that they kill you when they hit for a low average. Joe McEwing is a useful bench player--kind of a Rex Hudler for the new millennium--but his aversion to walks and lack of power make him a lousy pinch hitter. Like Hudler, he'll bounce around for a while and have some pretty good years with the bat. Unlike Hudler, he's not clinically insane.
2000		McEwing's approach is to volunteer for everything (he offered to be the team's emergency catcher in camp) and never sit still. That attitude is exactly what impresses Tony LaRussa, and it’s a sound approach for every minor-league second baseman with moderate talent. Like Mike Hargrove before him, he goes through a lengthy ritual of gyrations and adjustments before every pitch. Maybe some people think it's cute, but if I'm the umpire, I tell him to stand in. If I'm the pitcher, I dust him for wasting so much time that my arm stiffens up between pitches.
1999		An unheralded pick out of a New Jersey community college, ’98 was shaping like the year that he was going to be run out of baseball if he didn’t improve. He improved, and he’s in that same pool of barracudas waiting for Willie McGee to fall apart like a dried-out old rubber band.

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