The Houston Strangler

Shawn Chacon has been indefinitely suspended from the Astros and will likely be released or traded as soon as possible--that is, if any team is willing to take him on. This all comes after a clubhouse incident where Chacon knocked down his GM ED Wade, jumped on top of him and began choking him.

While some other blogs out there are making light of this, with post titles like "Chacon Goes Medieval on Wade" or otherwise lauding Chacon for enacting the Great American Dream--knocking your boss on his tail--this is, in fact, a level of personality abnormality so deep that even Sidney Ponson hasn't plumbed it.

Chacon, who has pitched in mediocre fashion for the Rockies, Pirates, Yankees and Astros, was dropped from the rotation last week, hardly a disservice to a guy with a 2-3 record against a 5.04 ERA/1.51 WHIP with 53 strikeouts, 41 walks and 16 HRs in only 85 IP. He set a record for nine straight no-decisions to start the year, a mark that reflects his own inconsistency and the Astros' awful bullpen. 

But no matter how you slice those numbers or try and point your fingers at relief pitchers, spotty defense, homer-happy Minute Maid Park (AKA Coors Lite), or the ascendancy of Mars in the house of Saturn, Chacon didn't deserve a rotation spot, not on the borderline-contending Astros or the last-place Mariners.

This year's numbers are not at all out of whack with his career stats, where he's 45-61, with 4.99/1.51 ERA/WHIP. He's never walked fewer than 62 batters in a year when he's thrown more than 100 innings, and has only once broken 100 strikeouts in those same 100+ IP seasons--his career K/BB ratio is 1.30, an awful stat that shows a guy to whom the plate is a foreign country, visited only on rare holidays from giving up dingers. For the bizarre reason only explained by Colorado's pre-humidor pitching conditions, Chacon was the team's closer in 2004, logging a modest 35 saves, but racking up a 7.11 ERA and a 1-9 record, with a precisely balanced 52/52 K/BB ratio and 12 homers in 63 IP. 

Not that his conduct is excusable for a guy with better numbers--Sidney Ponson's only defense for his ludicrous me-first behavior is that he has had some good stretches, but he's still a misogynist buffoon who can't even respect the authority of his country's federal judges. To come from a guy who ought to have been working out his problems in AAA years ago is an odd sort of egomania utterly so out of proportion to reality that it's simply delusional.

In spite of his decidedly average stats, he's been given a long leash by the various clubs he's pitched for, until Wade decided he'd seen enough of Chacon on the bump on Sunday, and dropped him to the pen, where he is no stranger (half of his major-league appearances have come out of the bullpen).

When Wade invited Chacon into Cooper's office to talk, Chacon refused, saying whatever Wade had to say to him, he could say in the middle of the clubhouse. According to Chacon, he was calmly eating from the postgame buffet while Wade began yelling at him, until Chacon told him "he'd better stop" yelling at Chacon. When Wade continued, Chacon stood up to face Wade who told him to "look in the mirror" at which point Chacon grabbed Wade by the neck and threw him to the ground.

The Astros have indefinitely suspended Chacon and will undoubtedly see if there's a team that will offer a bucket of practice baseballs or perhaps a few old towels for the well-traveled and well-worn Chacon, but likely they will end up releasing him. Even by Chacon's own account, quoted above--Wade and the Astros have not commented on the specifics of the suspension--his behavior was irrational and confrontational. Knowing that you're going to get your butt chewed out by your boss (and perhaps Chacon felt a demotion coming, or worse) and then trying to turn the situation to your own terms, demanding that your boss publicly carry out the personnel unpleasantness that comes with any job, then continuing to eat your free food as if your angry boss is no concern of yours, is asking for trouble. And Chacon got it.

He's certainly thrown his last pitch for the Astros, and perhaps for any major-league team. Unlike Ponson--whom I'd fervently hoped would meet the same fate, only to see the Yanks give him another undeserved shot at redemption--Chacon really has nothing to offer any team in terms of talent, and whatever intangibles he can bring are clearly of the negative and team-degrading variety.

While starting pitching is always at a premium, and never more so than in this year's injury-plagued pitching drought, let's hope nobody's desperate to give this guy another shot. No matter how much any of us might dislike or even despise our own bosses, knocking him (or her) down is a shortcut to a pink slip and likely a charge of battery, and baseball players should be treated no differently. If ballplayers are to act like role models, as so many of us exhort them to, we must treat them like role models and punish them accordingly.