The Genius Maker #43

Happy Father’s Day!

Friday saw the Yankee offense put an embarrassing effort. Doug Davis, who had a 5.90 ERA coming into the game and the Cubs had not won a single game in his 6 starts, shut us down for 1 run and only 3 hits in 7.1 innings. That is a pathetic job by the offense against the 35 year old slop throwing southpaw.

Saturday’s game was a pretty exciting game (although I watched it fast on DVR). My comments:

Granderson is still doing well, but it appears that he is struggling a little now against lefties as has been his issue in the past. Not sure if stats back me up or not on this, but he seems to be chasing a lot of bad pitches that he was not before.

Gardner’s defense has been phenomenal. In this game, he made a catch not many LF’rs make, but took his speed and then threw a perfect strike to home to double up an attempt tag up by Pena and this was the play of the game.

Martin, who blocked what seemed like almost 10 balls in the dirt during the game took a hard hit on Pena and then showed Pena the ball afterward. That is something I have done before; in fact, I once lightly tossed the ball underhand at a guy after he ran me over. While on this, people have asked my opinion about being able to run over catchers. First, I must say that I see both sides to the discussion (The purity of the game side and the safety side). My feeling is that if a catcher gives the runner plenty of space to slide, there should be no collision. If a catcher has the ball and then smothers the plate then the runner should be able to knock him over. There are so many little comments that can be made because home plate is different in that you can over run home plate so there is no worry about too much speed going into the non force play. I once got leveled catching a ball in front of the plate and then immediately turning toward the runner I got lifted off my feet. This guy was 6’1” 225 easy and I went flying. I held on to the ball as I lifted myself up and walked back to the dugout removing my lip from my teeth. I still have a barely visible cut above my lip from that blast. Who knows if my herniated disc in my neck or even my broken disc in my back was caused by that one blow? I doubt the back is, but the neck is possible, along with a hundred other possibilities such as every foul ball off my mask (which doesn’t hurt BTW and is like getting hit with a heavy pillow). In summary, I think it is a little excessive to be able to run over a catcher. The issue is I am not sure what rule would be the best to enforce with the exception of the comment I gave before about leaving the runner a spot to slide. There is not a clear cut answer.

Sorry for the tangent…

Cano continues to play at best average in the field and with his elite talent it is really frustrating. He has been sloppy and lazy. He committed another error yesterday and could have had 2 errors on the same play if Pena were heads up on 3rd. Not getting home by Pena was costly as the great play by Gardner ended the inning right after that.

While on Cano, he is getting his hits and it is hard to complain about an .864 OPS, but he should be over .900 and has the ability to be over 1.000. He has to learn some plate discipline and pitch recognition. At 28 I would hope it would start to happen, but he has not improved at all in that department.

Cory Wade has an excellent changeup and seems like a good change of pace out of the bullpen. Out of all the guys who have come up this year, he and Noesi are the guys I think have a future.

Some updates on OPS:
Granderson .959
Teixeira .901
Cano .864
ARod .862
Gardner .789 (think about is his SB’s were better to go along with the elite defense)
Martin .771
Swisher .731
Nunez .709 (Big hit last night, but still needs to tighten up his defense)
Posada .695
Jeter .649 (at this level he really is not missed much)
Cervelli .528 (at this level he belongs in the minor leagues)