To me, the Angles benching Jose Guillen for the rest of the season and playoffs, is like telling your doctor you think they’re a hack while they’re delivering your baby. You need them now, and there’s a good chance you’ll need them later.

The Angles are a team that simply cannot get out of their own way. They’re like that friend everyone has who repeatedly fails to show up for the job interviews other people set up for them. The Angles, despite having had some significant injuries this season, really have no excuse for not being comfortably in first place in the AL west and guaranteed at least a wild card birth.

With their massive payroll and star-studded line-up, this team should be destroying other clubs. But when they were in striking distance they got swept by Boston and did a face plant against the A’s. Now the wild card is a distant memory, and they have to win outright in the west to make the playoffs. Sound likes a good time to SUSPEND ONE OF YOUR BEST PLAYERS.

So Guillen goes off after being pinch run for, throws some stuff, pouts, yells, the usual. He tosses his helmet in the general direction of manager Mike Scioscia. Add these to a supposed laundry list of other clubhouse grievances, and the team decides he’s done for the year. No play, no pay, no nothing.

Sorry guys, but this is a terrible move. Here’s why:

1) 148 games, .294 average, 27 hrs, 104 RBI… That’s a big hold to fill in your line-up, even for the Angels. Nevermind his cannon arm from left field.
2) If you go on to miss the playoffs, or bow out early, all the fans are going to look directly at that move as the reason, leaving a big stain on the management team. Plus, now you’ve gotten the players union involved with a messy appeal. It’s just more stress at a time when you really don’t need it.
3) It’s just a terrible business move. I’m sure owner Arte Moreno isn’t sitting there in his box saying, “Wow, I’m really glad I paid six-million dollars to see what this guy’s got in his wardrobe”.

I know the argument about him being a distraction and unpopular with other players, but you can’t tell me it’s the first time those circumstances have surrounded a star. Reggie Jackson had issues with teammates, and I’ve been told he was a pretty valuable playoff performer on occasion. And how many times have you heard one of Barry Bonds’ teammates complain about him? Exactly.

For me, anything short of this guy being in prison should see him in the line-up if the Angles are serious about winning. Kobe Bryant was on trial for rape and he still played in the NBA finals, for goodness sake. And you can’t try and tell me that anybody ever presumed him innocent.
The only way the Angles come out of this well is if this team now rallies, wins the division and goes on to at least make the World Series, but the odds of this are already steep, and they’re that much more steep without Guillen.

For the Angles and for their fans, this is shooting yourself in the foot. To use one of life’s most grizzly similes, it is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Although perhaps the best way to understand it is actually in pennant terms, because Anaheim, in the baseball world, what you’re really doing, is cutting off your throws, to spite your race.