Stone: Hendry Wasted 'Golden Opportunity' With Colvin
CHICAGO (WSCR) Last season, it seemed as if Tyler Colvin could be the Chicago Cubs' right fielder of the future, but on Monday the team sent him to Triple-A Iowa to get more at-bats and more playing time.
"I'd like to congratulate Jim Hendry," Steve Stone said on the Mully and Hanley Show. "Because after 20 years in the major leagues, he has figured out that young kids need to get at-bats... I don't know the answer to this, but last year was a golden opportunity to find out one way or the other, if Tyler Colvin could actually play.
LISTEN: Steve Stone On The Mully And Hanley Show
Podcast
For the rest of this interview and other 670 The Score interviews click here.
"You pretty much knew that [Kosuke] Fukudome was not your future. The jury is out on whether Colvin is their future. But not having raised a left-handed run producer for 30 years out of their system, you would think that they would have found out about Colvin last year. They didn't know last year if Tyler Colvin could play everyday. I know he had some pretty decent numbers, but they didn't know if he could play everyday.
In 394 plate appearances in 2010, Colvin had a .254 batting average with 20 home runs, 56 runs batted in and a .816 OPS. This season, Colvin has only managed to get 68 at-bats through the teams first 39 games and has a .191 batting average with two home runs.
The way Hendry and the Cubs have handled Colvin isn't the only issue that Stone sounded off on.
"The advantage of having as bad of contracts as the Cubs have," Stone said. "Is that when they do come off the books after this year, there's going to be in the neighborhood of $40 to $50 million to spend. Now if they spend it as poorly as they did last time there;s going to be a problem."
