Durhham is disappointing the fans... again!

Durham is not deliverying on his multi-million dollar salary (what, $7.7M this year?). According to a Chronicle article, Durham did not travel to Arizona for a voluntary conditioning minicamp or to SF to work with Conte. What? Are we not paying you enough?

I think it was bad enough that he missed so much of the past two years insisting on doing things his way. His bat is extremely valuable and critical for the Giants lineup and any missed time hurts our chances to win, like it did especially in 2005 when neither of his replacements, Neifi and Ransom, performed adequately. I feel that he owes it to us to put in the extra effort to ensure that he is healthy for the whole 2005 season.

At least he said that he followed the special workout regimen that Conte had prescribed to strengthen Durham's legs. But had he been here working with Conte, the Giants could have monitored his progress and make adjustments to his exercise routine to maximize whatever they were hoping to do. Instead, it is like running a computer program and hoping it will work on its first compile versus running it in debug mode and checking to see if there are any problems with how you thought the program would work.

For the Giants and Durham's sake, I hope that the workout regimen worked as planned. I would be disappointed if Durham played under 140 games and my hope is that he will come in around the 150 game range. His missed games costed us the NL West pennant in 2004 and I expect a tight race again with LA and SD being competitive, and perhaps AZ if things work out perfectly for them (meaning some of their Baby 'Backs come through in 2005).