Comments on: Baseball!

By: Rich B. Plesur

Rich B. Plesur — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:25:03 +0000

For years I’ve made the point that A-Rod is a selfish player who feasts on mediocre pitching (or a pitcher having the worst game of his career) and struggles against quality pitching. Finally the rest of the world is seeing him for the fraud he truly is. The more important the situation, the worse his play. Who has more 6-RBI games in blowouts than A-Rod? Nobody in the history of the game, that’s who. Beltran isn’t as lame as A-Rod, but he comes close. Ship him back to Kansas City so he can lead the Royals back to last (or 4th) place, which is where they were with him weaving his magic there. Give me a group of team players like Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill and Scotty Brosius — guys whose stat lines looked ordinary but whose performance on the field won games. Keep your primadonnas like A-Rod, Beltran, Bonds and Griffey Jr.. They always remind me of Ralph Kiner and the story ol’ Ralph used to tell about how he asked for a raise after leading the league in home runs and the owner said, “You aren’t getting a raise. We would have come in last place with or without your home runs.” Let us admire how Carlos Beltran hit 8 home runs in the post season in ‘04 when it was time for a new contract. He did more in 2 weeks for Houston than he’d done in 7 years for Kansas City. Ka-ching! Tampa Mike wants him back. Why?

By: Rich B. Plesur

Rich B. Plesur — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:49:00 +0000

Al Sternberg,

Excellent post.

By: Fique por dentro Baseball » Blog Archive » Baseball! » Joe Posnanski

Fique por dentro Baseball » Blog Archive » Baseball! » Joe Posnanski — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:22:23 +0000

[...] second, when the situation calls for his team’s #3 or 4 hitter(him) … fique por dentro clique aqui. Fonte: [...]

By: Best Things I Read This Week: Some baseball stuff and a Sasha Grey takedown « Patrick Hayes

Mon, 25 May 2009 02:49:54 +0000

[...] Joe Posnanski: I think it’s safe to call Posnanski the most passionate and smart baseball writer. Perfect combo of stats and just love for the game. [...]

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 23 May 2009 08:18:48 +0000

Mike, I saw AO crash into the centerfield fence in a 1971 game at old municipal stadium against the Orioles. My little league team was in the bleachers. If you were ever at the stadium, you’ll remember how dead center field had a rectangular area where the fence line was probably thirty feet beyond regular. AO hit the fence in almost a dead run. He had to be carried off the field on a stretcher.

ON a positive note, Terry Crowley hit his first career grand slam. I got the ball!

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:59:42 +0000

At this point, I’d take Grady Sizemore over Beltran. But, is Nate McLouth making plays to win games? Don’t the Pirates stink?

By: Sweatpants00

Sweatpants00 — Thu, 21 May 2009 18:29:50 +0000

Richard Aronson,
Way to discredit the abilities and talents of a consistently good to excellent veteran baseball player over one play of one game. Sure, that’s totally reasonable. So if he wants to be considered good, next time he should just bowl over a fielder or two and conduct a post game interview more to your liking.

Al Sternberg (#18),
I need not type a thing. TampaMike (#21), Adam (#22), JeffSol (#23), and Brent (#24) rhetorically sodomized and dispatched of your illogical slop. In the words of JeffSol, “Go back to WFAN and complain to Beningo about this nonsense. This is an enlightened baseball community…” Uh-huh… That is timeless.

By: Bellylard

Bellylard — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:00:57 +0000

A real leader would have run into his left fielder, causing concussions, broken bones, and a really popular youtube video. Shame on Beltran for not causing a collision that would waste the rest of his exorbitant salary while he’s on the DL!

By: Mike Bagnall

Mike Bagnall — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:44:21 +0000

There were whispers of criticism regarding AO’s lack of “aggressiveness” too. He and Beltran don’t run the bases like Hal McRae and Darryl Porter or play defense like Tom Poquette, but they are better at both than any of those mentioned. Some players’ best efforts come from brute force and others succeed through grace, trickery and deceit. There is room in baseball for both kinds. I always thought Otis was more fun to watch than George Brett, but that’s just a matter of taste. I never saw him crash into the fence even once, but he was AWFULLY good in CF and he knew what to do with the ball after he caught it.

By: Richard Aronson

Richard Aronson — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:22:28 +0000

WRT Carlos Beltran: the Dodgers beat the Mets Monday night in large part because Carlos Beltran, the center fielder, who says he called for an easy fly ball six times, still backed away from the left fielder at the last moment, turning an easy first out of the bottom of the 11th inning into a two base error. Now yes, the Mets did a lot of highly questionable things as well as that one (missing third base, failing to throw to the catcher from 50 feet away with a force and the runner barely halfway home, not to mention three errors earlier in the game) but if Beltran is really that good, he’s going to knock down the left fielder. He’ll only have to do it once. Now forevermore there will be doubt in the Mets outfield, and motivation for opposing fans to yell so loudly that calls for the ball won’t be heard.

But what’s worse to me is that Beltran then hung his left fielder out to dry. “I called for it like six times,” he said, if I recall correctly. A team player does not do that. A team player tells the manager what happened, let the manager ream out the left fielder, and publicly says, “Obviously we didn’t communicate well enough out there. Next game we’ll get it right.” Beltran showed negative leadership Monday night. I’m sorry, but that one game is enough for me to move him behind Pujols (and probably several middle infielders) as the best player in baseball).