One thing people don't understand about Adrian Gonzalez is that he lives on a planet where the only things that matter are his faith, family and the next day's starting pitcher.

He's not very polished when it comes to the media, doesn't understand the importance of public perception, and always speaks from his heart.

And bad things tend to happen whenever he's asked to offer an opinion, like earlier this week when he headed over to ESPN to talk about the state of the Sox.

He had to know going in that there would be inquiries about the starting pitchers' dietary habits, but instead of having a canned answer prepared – where is the team's public relations department in all of this? – he spoke candidly.

"We just didn't play good baseball," Gonzalez said of the Red Sox' September collapse. "People gotta eat, whether it's chicken or steak."

Cue the talking heads:

"Gonzalez is selfish."

"He doesn't get it."

"He only cares about stats."

Those are just some of the things that have been said about Gonzalez throughout the media over the last few days.

I agree his comments were absolutely asinine and completely out of touch. A simple, "We have to play better and things must change," would have played much better, but the only thing Gonzalez is guilty of is being an aloof superstar.

I mean, we are talking about a guy that initially blamed God and ESPN for the team's collapse in September.

But to suggest that Gonzalez only cares about personal performance is a ridiculous statement. In fact, I don't even understand it means.

If hitting .338/.410/.548 with 27 homers and 117 RBIs and playing premium defense equates to only caring about stats, give me nine of those guys and we'll win the World Series each year while our pitchers suck drumsticks on the mound.

This isn't football. You can't decide that there's no way you are going to lose the game, dig down deep for something extra, and then will your team to victory.

Caring about winning in baseball means staying in shape and being mentally prepared to perform and then doing so. That's exactly what Gonzalez did last year.

So what if he's never going to be a rah-rah guy like Dustin Pedroia or a lovable fan favorite like David Ortiz? Change your expectations and you won't be disappointed.

Gonzalez isn't a leader in the classic sense and he's going to say some weird stuff from time-to-time. I don't think it's coming from a bad place. He's just oblivious to the climate and scrutiny surrounding him and the team.

I can live with that as long as he's putting up great numbers and not causing problems in the clubhouse, and by all accounts he's a great teammate. His comments to ESPN even can be taken as example of that.

He could have easily thrown a few people under the bus, but didn't. His teammates probably love him for saying what most of them are thinking.

Still, it's probably a good idea for Bobby Valentine to take a page from Bill Belichick's book and tell him to shut up so people can just focus on his game.

After all, we wouldn't want people thinking he only cares about himself.