This, for me, was a rare opportunity to pick the brain of a qualified, professional assessor of baseball talent (no, it wasn’t Matthew Berry). As a fantasy baseball enthusiast, I was interested in the upside potential of certain Cuban players, and Kendry Morales was amongst them. The scout’s comments concerning Kendry Morales were less than flattering. In fact, the scout described Kendry Morales as being one the least (if not -the- least) intelligent baseball players he’d ever scouted. Apparently, aside from a mediocre skill set, Kendry Morales is intellectually challenged to the point where he can barely even process batting signs. His exact words to describe Morales: “grossly overrated”. It seems that Kendry Morales is the Derek Zoolander of baseball players, except he hasn’t retained Maury Ballstein as his agent and he doesn’t involve himself in gasoline fights.

Anyway, the story reminded me a bit of former Dodgers’ slugger Pedro Guerrero’s post-retirement struggles with the law http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/2000/06/06/roundup_ap/. The CliffsNotes version of the story is that, in 1999, Pedro Guerrero was arrested by the D.E.A. for conspiracy to traffic cocaine. At trial, his lawyer successfully argued that Guerrero’s I.Q. (70) was too low for him to comprehend the fact that he was involved in a drug deal. On a personal level, I’ve relied on the “ignorance” excuse many times in my dealings with my wife (thought the dishes were already clean, thought she was washing the bed sheets so I didn’t bother to make the bed, etc., etc.). As it turns out, the “idiot defense” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_defense can be employed to absolve us not only from irritating our spouses, but even felonious acts punishable by life in prison. Good to know, because I’m way too pretty to go to prison.

Anyway, the scout -did- sing the praises of Chicago White Sox prospect Dayan Viciedo, whom he’d been following since Viciedo was 16. Take this for whatever it’s worth, but he envisioned Viciedo as having the potential to mature into a 35+ home run hitter with plus batting average at the Major League level.