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The recent injury suffered by the San Francisco Giants’ catcher Buster Posey has led many to debate whether the rules should be changed to stop such collisions at the plate.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\nThe recent injury suffered by the San Francisco Giants’ catcher Buster Posey has led many to debate whether the rules should be changed to stop such collisions at the plate.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have always found it curious that this type of physical play is allowed to happen in the first place.\u00c2\u00a0 Baseball is typically a non-contact sport and allowing two players to collide in this way – the runner deliberately trying to smash the catcher, who is effectively a sitting duck – just seems odd.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
There’s no skill to it, the play is merely a test of misguided bravado.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not ‘playing hard’, it’s ‘playing dumb’.<\/p>\n
Still, plays at the plate are one of the most exciting parts of baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s shown by the buzz that sweeps through the crowd when a player tags up or hurtles around third while the outfielder pegs the ball in from the outfield.\u00c2\u00a0 You don’t want to take that away from the game by changing the rules to greatly hand the advantage to one side.\u00c2\u00a0 It should be a contest, just one that involves skill (a masterful sweeping tag by the catcher, an acrobatic leap and slide by the runner etc) rather than muscle.<\/p>\n
The incident and resulting injury have hit the headlines because of the person who ended up on the wrong end of the collision.\u00c2\u00a0 If it had happened to the Giants’ back-up catcher\u00c2\u00a0Eli Whiteside\u00c2\u00a0for example then – rightly or wrongly – it wouldn’t have generated such a loud reaction.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Buster Posey is one of the brightest young stars in the game, a player of great importance to his team and the sort of talent that any baseball fan, regardless of their rooting interests, should be sad to see shelved for any length of time.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s natural that an incident involving him should raise concerns, but perhaps the Giants and Posey might have acknowledged them more before the incident even happened.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
On any given day a catcher could be involved in a close play at the plate.\u00c2\u00a0 If the potential loss of Posey would be so devastating, should he be put at such risk in the first place?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Moving him to another fielding position would be going too far, certainly so early in his career.\u00c2\u00a0 If someone is a good catcher and can hit as well as Posey can then that’s a great advantage for any team.\u00c2\u00a0 However, there are ways that a catcher can protect himself through the position they take up when fielding a play at the plate.<\/p>\n
Posey got himself into an awkward position to receive the ball and that clearly played its part in him suffering an injury.\u00c2\u00a0 Similarly you often see catchers blocking the plate and essentially challenging the baserunner to run\u00c2\u00a0them over if they want to score.\u00c2\u00a0 Posey didn’t quite do that in this case, Scott Cousins did have part of the plate to slide into, but it’s the sort of thing you see in the Majors time and again and it leaves you wondering how more injuries don’t occur.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Posey begins his recovery, the Giants should think about whether they can do more in helping their young star protect himself in future; working on his positioning and making it clear to him that he doesn’t have to put his body on the line.<\/p>\n
This\u00c2\u00a0may make it harder to stop the runner in some cases, but the risk of letting a run score every now\u00c2\u00a0and then has got to be\u00c2\u00a0worth taking when the alternative is to lose the heartbeat of your team for a substantial length of time.<\/p>\n
Pitchers should pitch in at the plate<\/strong><\/p>\n In discussing Interleague play last week, I only made a brief mention of the issues caused by the two leagues playing by different rules.\u00c2\u00a0 Two National League games on ESPN America made me think about the topic more closely this week.<\/p>\n ESPN America was showing the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Detroit Tigers before rain disrupted play and the channel turned its attention to the Washington Nationals-Milwaukee Brewers game instead.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n We joined the action just after Mike Morse had hit a home run off Zack Greinke to tie the game at 3-3.\u00c2\u00a0 It was the only blot on Greinke\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strong pitching performance and he backed that up with his first home run in a Brewers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 uniform.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a cheap effort either, sailing high through the sky and just bending the right-way around the foul pole.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Greinke had previously hit a home run for the Royals during Interleague play and was known as a decent hitter prior to his professional pitching career.\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t the only pitcher swinging the lumber to good effect either.<\/p>\n The next night on ESPN America, Cliff Lee went 2-for-4 at the plate for the Phillies while driving in three runs.\u00c2\u00a0 Carlos Zambrano, probably the best-hitting pitcher in the Majors, had a 3-for-3 night against the Mets on Thursday as well.\u00c2\u00a0 Then you had the\u00c2\u00a0D-Backs’ Zach Duke hitting a three-run homer on Saturday against the Astros, and the Astros’ J.A. Happ hitting a longball of his own yesterday.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Watching pitchers get key hits is one of the joys of National League play and most baseball fans also appreciate seeing a pitcher do the less-flashy, but equally important and skilful tasks such as laying down bunts to advance runners.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind the two leagues playing by different rules; it adds something to the Majors by creating two slightly different styles of the game.\u00c2\u00a0 However, if consensus called for the rules to be aligned then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt which way it should go.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n There are a very small number of genuinely star-level hitters who would be affected by the DH being discarded (demonstrated starkly on Saturday\u00c2\u00a0when the Toronto Blue Jays used Corey Patterson as a DH. Yes he hit a\u00c2\u00a0walk-off home run, but\u00c2\u00a0he’s still a long, long\u00c2\u00a0way from being an impact bat, as his lifetime sub .300 on-base percentage shows).\u00c2\u00a0On the other hand, pitchers taking their spot in the batting lineup forces managers into making additional tactical decisions about in-game substitutions and, more importantly, pushes pitchers into developing another side to their game.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something all professional sportsmen should take pride in doing, even if that means using their athletic talent and dedication simply to become adequate at a particular skill.<\/p>\n Infielder Wilson Valdez\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recent pitching effort may have been something of a freak event, but pitchers stepping up to the plate should continue to be a regular part of baseball.<\/p>\n Seeing-eye singles<\/strong><\/p>\n I keep hoping that the Twins will recover some good form to make my prediction that they would\u00c2\u00a0get to the World Series look marginally less silly.\u00c2\u00a0 Those hopes haven’t come to much yet.\u00c2\u00a0 All is not completely lost though.\u00c2\u00a0 Their loss against the Angels on Friday, letting a 5-0 lead slip in the final two innings, could have pushed\u00c2\u00a0them over the edge; however they followed it up with a stunning victory on Saturday.\u00c2\u00a0 Anthony Swarzak pitched eight shut-out innings in a spot start, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning,\u00c2\u00a0and Danny Valencia hit a walk-off single in the tenth to win the game 1-0.\u00c2\u00a0 That showed a lot of character in Ron Gardenhire’s team.<\/p>\n Evan Longoria in the lead-off spot for the Rays?\u00c2\u00a0 Manager Joe Maddon is\u00c2\u00a0never afraid to try something\u00c2\u00a0unconventional and it might be just what’s needed to help the third baseman out of a slump.<\/p>\n It will take a while for the Giants’ gloom to lift, but Brandon Crawford really gave their fans something to smile about on Friday night. He became only the sixth player in Major League history to hit a grand slam in his first big league at-bat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thoughts on Buster Posey’s injury, plus pitchers at the plate and the slumping Twins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[110,553,134],"class_list":["post-10897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-minnesota-twins","tag-mlb-2","tag-san-francisco-giants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10897"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10933,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897\/revisions\/10933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}