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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
“It’s difficult. Tough break,” Rodriguez said in almost a hushed tone after New York lost to the Seattle Mariners 4-2 Tuesday night.
Rodriguez broke his hand when he was hit by an 88 mph changeup from Felix Hernandez in the eighth inning. He went down in considerable pain. The Yankees said he has a non-displaced fracture of the hand, and there is no timetable for his return. He will be placed on the disabled list and will remain in Seattle with the team for the series finale Wednesday.
Eric Chavez, Rodriguez’s replacement at third base, had a similar injury in 2004. He was out for about five weeks.
“You hate to see a guy go down on something freak like that,” Yankees’ first baseman Mark Teixeira said. “I had a weird feeling it wasn’t good.”
Rodriguez was the last of three Yankees to get plunked in a five-batter stretch and that ended Hernandez’s night. He also hit Ichiro Suzuki and Derek Jeter with pitches.
Thanks to CH.
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People do not break hands.
- brought to you by the NBRA, the National Baseball-as-a-rifle Association.
You can stop right there.
The Yankees can survive with Chavez for a month
But can Chavez!
Heh.
We sent our regards.
Chavez for a month. You're funny.
Right. The Yanks aren't losing this division. They're a bit lucky the competition is a bit down this year in the AL East. There are no bad teams, but no other really good teams, either so New York should be fine. And losing A-Rod is just losing a good player for a while, not a transcendent player like he used to be.
Something tells me you haven't seen Shooty play 3B.
STOP MAKING FUN OF ME! I HAVE A GLANDULAR PROBLEM!
I'm pretty confidant that if I were to play Yankee 3B every day for 5 weeks, at the end of the stretch the Yankees would be in last place in the AL East. Pretty tough for the team to win when all the opposition has to do, any time they want to get on base, is bunt one down the 3B line.
I'm athletic enough and have a decent enough arm that if I played in, I could field a bunt and throw guys out at least every now and then. But against MLB hitters? I would not play in. Ever. You could have someone like Brendan Ryan up at the plate and I'd be playing 10 feet into the LF grass.
My God... of all the King Felix starts he's ever had and will ever have, this may go down as my favorite of all time. Break the hand of a roider and former Mariner who left for big bucks. Plunk a guy who was your teammate 36 hours prior, and also hit Derek Jeter? ####### awesome!
3B A-Rod
DH Chavez
LF Jones/Ibanez
to
3B Chavez
DH Jones/Ibanez
LF Ichiro!
Fact: Every team that replaced A-Rod's bat with Ichiro's has won 116 games.
Not Irabu.
Ohhh...you'll never make a monkey out of me!
I wouldn't have to actively try to sink them. It would just happen anyway. In the hypothetical world where someone who had no business being there was playing 3B, you aren't going to just screw up the 2-4 plays per game that typically are made by 3B. You're going to have MLB hitters targeting you.
All of the above, and the Red Sox too. And that's if I was trying my best to be a good Yankee.
Nah, I don't think I could be wretched enough to let the Sox pass them.
Probably the only worse spot to put an amateur is catcher or pitcher.
I'd like to think the Yankees could survive with a lower primate at third.
Oh, you would say that.
What would they do with Headley, or any other 3B that they trade for, when Rodriguez is back?
Bat to the back of the head, sack with bricks, Jersey Meadowlands.
Double plays?
Move Rodriguez to DH.
Move Rodriguez to DH.
What about all their other DHs?
Throw them in the trash or give them to Goodwill.
Well, they're mostly mediocre, so who cares? If the 3rd baseman they get is any good, bumping Ibanez/Jones out of the everyday lineup shouldn't be a big deal.
PLay deep and throw the runner out at second (you know, the one that reached already by beating out your throw). This worked perfectly for me when I played softball. I don't have a weak arm, and I would throw out a few people at first, but typically the ball was a dribbler and required me to charge hard and throw or a screamer that I was real happy to play back on. It wasn't worth the screamer to the face to play in enough to make the plays on the dribblers.
I'd rather an amateur at 3rd than 2nd. So far in the AL this year there have been 6,306 chances for 2nd basemen and just 3,621 for 3rd baseman, that's a difference of about 2 per game per team. Bunts would increase but I'd still want to stash my amateur at the position getting the fewest chances. The corner outfields have fewer "chances" but the damage done by misplayed fly balls and line drives would be greater than they would on misplayed grounders at third.
* Or, at least at my athletic peak, not the 45-year-old fatass I am now.
I think you'd just have to accept that DPs are not going to happen. Tell your SS/3B/P to just take the out at first. It's bad for a team to have an incompetant player anywhere, the question is just how bad.
If the other team didn't notice that I have no business being on the field, doesn't know the difference between me and average-glove-from-AA, and doesn't change their approach, this makes sense. But if they know how bad I am, third base is one of the easier places to target your hits - mostly because of the bunting option. Also, while a 2B handles more chances, a much higher percentage of those chances are easy places, where an amateur can pick the ball up and make a short throw to first.
Surely an infielder leaving the field in a body bag would be grounds for suspending the game to another day and thus a useful contribution.
Well, Ichiro has not looked like "Ichiro!" in the Yankee uniform so far, so Chone probably wouldn't be rejuvenated either.
Yanks won't get Montero now, so Cashman's best option in dealing with GMZ is to trade non-prospects for Justin Smoak, shifting Teixeira to 3B until A-Rod recovers. Smoak will be a switch-hitting Richie Sexson, guaranteed.
I don't know if it's quite that simple. At second base an amateur might be able to make 20% of the plays that a pro would. At third base it might be 5%.
After hitting the single in his first Yankee AB and stealing a base, he should have just walked off the field and retired. He could give a speech (translated of course) about fulfilling his lifelong dream of playing in pinstripes and then fly off into the sunset. He'd go straight into the HOF, and the writers would never cease using that small sample size performance to write about how Ichiro would have hit .400 for the Yankees, if he wanted to.
Then why is it that, year after year, Derek Jeter apparently has fewer balls hit in his general vicinity than any other SS in baseball?
Nope. Hasn't played a home game yet.
He did play third base in junior high school, before being moved to the outfield.
He doesn't play 3B. If he was a 3B as bad at fielding bunts as he is ranging from short, I'm sure he'd be targeted as well. I'm skeptical about the ability of hitters, while hitting against major league pitchers, to target specific fielders outside of the elective play such as a bunt.
edited for grammar
It made me want to take a hammer to their money-making body parts.
I like that the increasing use of extreme shifts could lead to a big comeback for bunting as a skill.
Hell, Josh Reddick bunted for a hit last night - on turf!
Actually, that may be the play: put the dork at third, tell the pitcher he'll have to be ready to field bunts.
It's a lousy situation all 'round, of course and Harveys is absolutely right that, for non-professionals or high college players, what looks like an easy play is not and what looks like a hard play is likely to end in injury.
I was at the game last night. Many of the people around me were booing Rodriguez when he was rolling around on the ground in pain. Frankly, I was disgusted. When the trainer led him off the field, I clapped for him, just to try to balance the other fans' reactions.
I've never seen Felix as wild as he was last night. He not only hit Ichiro, Jeter, and Rodriguez, he hit all of them in the space of five batters. But he was wild all night. Throwing pitches in the dirt, then high pitches that Jaso had to climb a ladder to reach. He clearly didn't have his command last night; I don't think the HBPs were intentional at all.
How would teams align their defense if they only had 6 fielders? Would it obviously be 3 infielders, 3 outfielders? Maybe you'd shift the one-man infield side depending on the handedness of the batter. First base would no longer be a position for slow men.
Answer that question first. And then you wonder how they would adjust things if they could add a single man with terrible range, instincts and hands. I think the position might be highly fluid. Maybe you have the terrible athlete field second base with nobody on, but play first base to hold on a runner. Maybe he goes to RF when a hard throwing lefty is on the mound.
I was joking. Agreed that it's not plausible that MLB hitters can target fielders (or, for that matter, that they are failing to hit balls in Jeter's direction for the 17th consecutive season).
Wee Willie Keeler says; "Hello."
Zombies are even more cliche than vampires!
When I was in little league my coach asserted that Rod Carew could do this, but I have no idea if it's true. I'm skeptical. I sure as hell know I couldn't do it, no matter what my coach thought was possible. I think he was setting an awfully high bar.
It's not plausible that they can do it and still hit the ball with any authority. It's entirely possible to shorten up and direct the ball, but (a) an amateur might well handle the ensuing groundball; and (b) you can't do it on every kind of pitch; if you start always punching it to third base, the pitcher will start throwing 90+ MPH high and inside.
This principle also explains jacksone's "why don't they bunt against the shift" question. One factor is that the pitcher is throwing hard, with movement, in an attempt to get the hitter to pull into the shift. Another is that the shift to some extent incorporates a small degree of intentional-walk tactics. So Fatso bunts once in a while; well, he's on first base now, he has no RBI on the play, and he's no threat to score from first on a double. The tactic has minimized his value.
The last factor doesn't explain why shifts are being used more and more on guys with non-Ortiz body types, naturally, but there's still the pitching pattern to contend with.
Carew might have. There are some stories about Wade Boggs doing this as well - guys who would position him one way, get burned, change positioning, then watch Boggs hit one into the spot they were playing before. Didn't they have some kind of skills challenge during an all-star game one year with targets on the field?
I could believe that guys like Gwynn, Carew, Boggs might have had some ability to target their hits, but not a lot. Otherwise they'd hit 1.000 instead of .350. But luckily for pitchers and fielders, these guys were the exception, not the norm.
But since the most important thing for a hitter is to hit the ball hard, directing the ball will generally not be effective if that means not hitting the ball as hard.
Fact: Every team that replaced A-Rod's bat with Ichiro's has won 116 games.
Brilliant!
I have no doubt Gwynn could do it, and I'm pretty sure I've heard him talk about it (was it discussed in Men at Work?). Gwynn's not a braggart so if he says he did it, then I believe him.
...
Then again, those guys were not know as power hitters. If you have their kind of reflexes and bat control, you may very well be able to guide the pitch, knowing that you are only going to get a base hit out of it.
They used to ask Ted Williams this. He would say that he was paid to hit the ball hard.
Hitting the ball hard is not the same as being a power hitter. All of those guys hit the ball hard. They just hit more more line drives than high fly balls. That's why they had a high batting average - line drives are more more likely to go for hits than are fly balls.
I watched Carew when he came up as a rookie. He squared up a lot of pitches; but he didn't get elevation on them. That was the big difference Carew and Olivo, whose career was winding down. Olive got more loft; Carew hit more stingers.
HAH! No ####### way.
I believe this site has a common meme for this kind of statement.
BEHOLD!
I played HS ball with someone who was drafted by the Yankees after high school and, post college career, ended up with a little over 550 plate appearances spread over two years in the Orioles minor league system. http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=hildre001bra. When I knew him, he wasn't "reasonably athletic" but instead one of the small handfull of absolutely best athletes in a city of a quarter million people that had, in years past, been the home of, among others Hank Aaron, Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige and a long line of baseball stars, starring at both baseball and basketball while in HS. Strong, fast, incredible hand-eye coordination. But when asked to play 3B, he fielded under .900 at Single A. Put the next best player on our HS team out there and it probably would have been under .800. Move both up to the majors and the speed increases and the errors probably go up, conservatively, 10-50%. Put "any reasonably athletic" person on the field, and he'd be lucky to turn a single ball in play into an out.
The corners of what? He could stand in the corner of the dugout looking sexier than Nick Punto, maybe.
They see a "goon" on the ice and they assume they could play better than them.
In fact, the majority of the "goons" actually made their way through the junior hockey ranks, and we often quite talented at that level as well.
I think you obviously stash the amateur in a corner outfield spot, or perhaps first base if the guy has really sure hands. Just look at where the worst fielders in MLB play now.
An athletic amateur might make a few plays in the infield but won't have the reflexes to make most plays without a lot of practice, and very well might get killed in the process. In the outfield, you have a bit more leeway in terms of reaction time, and if you play conservatively, your errors won't all turn into inside-the-park-home runs.
When Scott was healthy and Jennings was out, Matsui played left.
Go figure, Matsui gets an extra ~100 major league PAs thanks to his glove.
Yeah, the shift might help turning line drives into outs, but I've seen no evidence that this happens.
Greg Maddux is my favorite pitcher of all time, easy. Just great to watch pitch.
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