Phillies Take Brett Myers’ Desire to Start as Willingness to Accept Bullpen Role

Brett Myers is one of those cool pitchers who is so ambiguously, inconsistently skilled that you don’t know what position he plays.  He’s been a #1 starter, a #4 starter, a minor league underperformer, a closer, a starter again, and a former Phillie.

Plus he looks great. Jerry Lai-US PRESSWIRE

This has made his transgression into the free agent market somewhat clouded by mystery.  Who is he?  What does he do?  What are his strengths?  Who keeps telling him that ‘sinister merchant’ beard looks good?  Is it his evil reflection in the mirror?

Some of these questions, we will never know the answer to, forced to live the rest of our lives screaming at the sky with unanswered questions about Brett Myers.  It’s just another awful byproduct of baseball.

Myers has claimed he intends to start somewhere, and the Twins seem to be letting him intend thing without laughing in his face.

“They’re interested, or perhaps even very interested,” Myers’ agent bragged recently with Brett Myers-esque overconfidence.

The Phillies, being interested in every free agent on earth, are naturally sniffing around this whole business, assuming that by “start” Myers actually desires to “do whatever the hell my new team wants me to do with god damn smile on my face.”  Because the Phillies don’t really need another starter, but their interest indicates that they think they could get Myers to come out of the bullpen, if they really wanted to.  Their intentions remain to thicken that pen, and Myers certainly has the limbs to qualify for it.

The Phillies and Myers have a torrid, sexually charged history.  They spent a few years trying to change each other, then parted ways suddenly, and with much passive aggression on either side–Myers tried to garner pity from their mutual friends, while the Phillies flaunted their new starters without mercy.  Then they went ahead and drafted somebody who is apparently just like him.

So, you know.  This is all very weird.