Bill Schmidt’s blunt assessment took me by surprise.
During baseball’s winter meetings in December, I asked the Rockies general manager to assess third baseman Ryan McMahon.
“If you look, he’s an average player right now, and I’ve told him that,” Schmidt said. “He’s an above-average defender, which makes him the average player. He can be better. There are a lot of people who believe that.”
The Rockies have long tended to sugarcoat things, at least publicly. Schmidt has been refreshingly different.
Still, I had to wonder how McMahon felt when his boss called him “an average player.