Will Wonders Ever Cease?

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning when I looked at the front page of the Tribune’s sports section – Dr. Phil was there in all his newsprint glory, allowing that perhaps the decision to trade Brandon McCarthy for John Danks didn’t suck as bad as he originally thought back in December.

How about that – a member of baseball’s punditocracy actually admitting that he was wrong about something. I can only figure that Danks’ stellar turn in the Cactus League has Dr. Phil dreaming of another U.S. Cellular Field World Series – and it would really hurt his book deal if he kept alienating the guys who held the keys to his clubhouse access.

I kid, of course. I’m sure Dr. Phil cares more for reporting the truth than access and book deals.

Annnnyyyywaaaaayyy…this one paragraph intrigued me more than the rest of Dr. Phil’s bit:

This spring I've asked executives and scouts from other organizations how they see McCarthy, and the consensus is that he looks like a middle- or even a back-of-the-rotation guy, not the kind of guy you build a rotation around.

Perhaps I’m just too curious, but I wonder who those executives and scouts are. I mean, last winter, when Dr. Phil was wailing and gnashing his teeth over the trade, McCarthy was the bee’s knees. There were plenty of executives and scouts pimping him as the future savior of the White Sox rotation then.

So what’s changed? Are these guys throwing out the book on McCarthy based on three weeks of spring training? Could they have just been that wrong about him to begin with?

I understand the concept of There’s No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. But this strikes me as borderline ridiculous. If all it takes to lose your prospect status is a handful of crummy outings in Arizona in March, then maybe Billy Beane wasn’t too far off base in Moneyball.