Toronto GM J.P. Ricciardi went on an interesting rant about Adam Dunn yesterday, stating that he doesn’t want to acquire Dunn, because “he doesn’t like baseball all that much.” 

Ricciardi’s obviously defensive about his last place team, which is third from the bottom in runs scored, but seems to have undergone quite a philosophy shift from his Oakland roots.  The guy signed David Eckstein, for goodness sakes.

Mr. Redlegs has kindly supplied us with the audio, edited for your pleasure.

ricciardi_dunn.mp3

Edited 12:32:  Dunn responds with some choice words of his own (via Fay):

“I don’t know the clown. You can use the word clown.”

…

“I’ve seen it, I haven’t heard it. I really don’t care what one guy thinks, to be honest with you. If I’m a GM, I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to discredit a player.”

…

“I’m not going to sit here and defend someone who’s going to sit there and say I don’t care about baseball. It pisses me off, to be honest with you. He doesn’t even know me. If he knew me, fine. Say what you want. But this guy doesn’t know anything about me other than what he sees on whatever SportsCenter they have on up there.”

Attaboy.

Jesus, this just confirms everything we hate about front office people. Secretive, untrusting, completely devoid of factual information. Had they let the caller respond, I’m sure something along the lines of ‘well, for a guy who doesn’t like baseball, Dunn’s numbers are a helluva lot better than the guys on our team’. Have an opinion, sure, but using some nefarious innuendo to torpedo a player is just cheap. What a tool.

Comment by Sultan of Swaff — 6/19/2008 @ 12:04 pm

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Way to deflect any criticism away from yourself by throwing a player on another team under the bus! I wonder what kind of “homework” he did before signing a malcontent, aging Frank Thomas to a 2-year/$18 million dollar deal. He must really love to play the game!

Everything he said about Dunn could be true, but that was very unprofessional in my opinion. If you want to criticize Dunn’s numbers, that’s one thing, but to personally attack him was over the line and unnecessary. Hopefully Dunner goes into Toronto next week and embarrasses Ricciardi.

Comment by Andy — 6/19/2008 @ 12:43 pm

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I agree that it was unprofessional of Ricciardi to call out Dunn like he did, but I believe he confirmed what the rest of baseball thinks of Dunn. Sometimes the truth hurts. Has anyone ever accused Dunn of overexerting himself? In baseball circles, he and Junior are notorious “talent” guys. This laissez faire attitude has always rubbed me the wrong way and I think has contributed to the Reds losing ways of the past few years.

Comment by Ben — 6/19/2008 @ 1:10 pm

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I just heard CTR say that Dunn also said he was happy he wouldn’t have to worry about going to Canada and converting his money to Loonies. I love Adam Dunn.

Comment by Kerm — 6/19/2008 @ 1:17 pm

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This makes our Toronto series more interesting to say the least lol

Comment by Matt Steele — 6/19/2008 @ 1:52 pm

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I don’t know…Dunn never misses a game, and plays through injuries. If he didn’t like what he was doing, I tend to think he’d find a way not to play…especially the way he’s dogged all the time…essentially for not playing 70’s baseball…which pretty much went out of vogue when Whitey Herzog left the Cardinals.

Junior got his injuries on hustle plays and his legacy is “The Kid,” the one who loves to play the game, and it’s been reported over and over that’s how he’s regarded in the clubhouse.

Saying they aren’t gamers is conveniently choosing the words to use to discredit someone without looking at the statistical or written record.

Comment by Steve Price — 6/19/2008 @ 3:07 pm

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No offense Ben, but you are absolutely clueless.

Comment by Pete — 6/19/2008 @ 3:08 pm

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Exactly! I don’t know how/why people think that Dunn and Griffey are lazy, don’t try hard or have no work ethic.

Perceptions aren’t meeting with facts here

Comment by Matt Steele — 6/19/2008 @ 3:08 pm

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Yea, that Griffey sure sucks. If he wasn’t such a lazy ass he’d have 900 home runs instead of a paltry 600. And “Dead weight Dunn” would have a career OBP of .500 and would hit 50 HR’s a year instead of 40 if he actually liked baseball. Frickin’ bastards need to get off there asses and get their s— together.

Comment by Pete — 6/19/2008 @ 3:25 pm

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Sure seemed like Dunn (and others) sure loved baseball at lot more when Chris Chambliss was the hitting instructor.

Comment by Y-City Jim — 6/19/2008 @ 3:36 pm

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As a die hard bluejays fan, I would just like to say that he, and Gibbons are a major problem with our current organization. Gibbons questionable moves and Riccardi’s constant verbal outbursts about need to be resolved for the Jays to move forward. As far as Dunn and Griffey are concerned I think the lable of Lazy is an optical illusion that happens when a baseball player makes things look easy

Comment by derek — 6/19/2008 @ 9:51 pm

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I think maybe the Reds need more “talent” guys like Dunn rather than “effort/grit” guys like Hopper/Freel, etc, [i.e. more guys that don’t suck.]

Comment by Andrew — 6/20/2008 @ 9:04 am

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Derek:
Are you saying this is a common practice with your GM? That would explain some things.

It kills me when I hear that Jr. never hustles. If you were a professional athlete at his age and with the injury history he has sustained through, well, hustling, I don’t know how much better you could possibly be. And he has done it, as best we know, clean; which is a lot more than we can say for many (all?) of his contemporaries with similar numbers. He also has a pride factor. He works hard so their is no embarrassment. He doesn’t have to lift a finger for the rest of his life, he could have left the game anytime in the last few years and just waited for Cooperstown to call, but he goes out and does the best he can as often as he can. Does he sometimes sit out when he can play? Probably. But it also might help keep him on the field in August and September by sitting a series or two now. Should he be in the three hole? No. But as he collects more hits and nears more records you will see him be given more free passes due to pitchers not wanting to be the answer to a trivia question. That only helps the cause. Let him walk next year, but give him a little credit for professionalism.

As for Donkey: you don’t need to pencil him in the lineup, you can use a permenent marker. He’s going to give you 150 games year in and year out. Given our recent histories with Hamilton, Griffey, Freel, Hopper, etc., how much is that worth? That shows some kind of work ethic to me. And seriously, how many guys Dunn’s size run around like Freel anyway? Sure Dunn has his flaws, but I don’t think that every time he misplays a ball it’s due to being lazy.

And let’s face it: most of us are professionals at whatever we do for a living; but what if the company you worked for never produced a quality product and you couldn’t control the process? It’s much harder to work for a loser than a winner. Yeah, professionals…blah, blah, blah. It’s still the reality. You get out of a guy what you put into the team. You can’t blame Dunn or Griffey for the culture.

Comment by preach — 6/20/2008 @ 9:34 am

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I think Riccardi’s comment reveals a lot more about Riccardi than it does about Dunn.

Comment by Shawn — 6/20/2008 @ 10:27 am

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“he’d have 900 home runs instead of a paltry 600″
no but he’d have more hits if he’d run to first base instead of jogging to it, and he’d have more doubles if he’d run instead of standing at home and worshipping his fly ball that doesnt clear the fence and he ends up on first instead of second.

I have no major problem with Dunn… he seems to have worked hard to improve. Last year I wasn’t happy with his defense but honestly he has improved at that quite a bit. “He keeps the clubhouse loose”, that can be good and/or bad. Sure it’s nice to keep loose but its also nice to show that you aren’t satisfied with losing and that you won’t settle for it. We still have too many guys shrugging their shoulders when the team loses.

And I wonder how many of you guys would feel the same way at your own jobs if you had some guy there that had been a go-getter 10 years ago but now did his job half heartedly while making 10 times what you make for busting your hump. Griffey can still run, occasionally he’ll go all out for a fly ball and he can move when he wants to. But every trip to first base is a jog no matter where or how hard his ground ball was hit.

Comment by Shane — 6/20/2008 @ 11:41 am

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Thought this was interesting, especially with the comparisons to the workplace:

Jun 19 FOXSports.com’s Ken Rosenthal reports Cincinnati Reds OF Adam Dunn wants to stay in Cincinnati. “If you would have asked me last year, I probably would have said no,” Dunn said. “But this is the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve actually had guys come up through the organization and make a significant impact, not just be role players. And I know we’ve got a couple of pitchers down in Triple-A right now who will help even more. The young talent is finally good here. I definitely see a future - definitely.”

Comment by preach — 6/20/2008 @ 2:28 pm

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