"All he needs to do is bunt," lamented the beloved announcer/sire of Jennifer Lopez, pointing to a defensive over-shift that moved practically the entire Redsock team to the right of White Plains. The Yankees needed runners, and a bunt toward third would easily put Morales on first and bring the tying run to the plate. This wasn't Boeing software or Russian interference. It was Little League baseball. It was ridiculously obvious. All he needed to do was bunt, dammit, BUNT!
Broadcast mates Jessica Mendoza and Matt Vasgersian hemmed and hawed. Mendoza noted that, across Morales' 13-year MLB career, he's never once recorded a sacrifice bunt. Not once. Thus, he probably lacks that rookie league skill set. He doesn't practice bunts. He doesn't think of bunts. He never learned to bunt. You might as well ask him to fart blue.
"Well, on my team, everybody will practice bunting," A-Rod fumed.
As if to show support for A-Rod, Morales pulled a dribbler down the first base line and was out by 20 feet, Cano-ing down the line. He was destined to fail, just as - hopefully - he is destined to vanish as soon as the first injured Yankee returns. (Didi, this week?) Morales runs like a tractor in a mud pit. Two nights ago, RF Mookie Betts nearly threw him out at first. His inability to bunt allows defenses to shift any way they damn please; it's why he's hitting .197 and will soon be working retail.
Listen: I'm not blaming Morales for last night's debacle. The full Death Star unraveled. We love CC Sabathia as team leader, but so low is the bar for his outings that a so-so start for any other pitcher was hailed by ESPN like a Koufax perfect game. By now, Luis Cessa has become the Yankee Moth Man: his appearance signifies impending death and destruction. When Aaron Boone rests his fabled (and increasingly overworked) big five relievers, the bullpen floor turns to quicksand. And then there is Frazier - dear God - who turned three singles into a pair of triples and a double. Mendoza noted that his defensive OF stats are the worst in baseball. And I don't think the numbers show how wobbly he looks when making plays. In RF, he is Chaos, personified.
Frazier is becoming this year's Miguel Andujar: a great young bat with no place to hide in the field. He's so bad out there that this might become a mental thing, seriously jeopardizing his future. There is something wrong with a fleet-footed, 24-year-old, full-time DH. It's sort of like being a 35-year-old Kendrys Morales, and we know how that story is turning out. (Another bad sign: Frazier, perhaps the most precocious of Yankee rookies, refused to talk with reporters last night. If this becomes a Knoblauch-Sax type of psychosis...)
The greatest addition to the 2019 Yankees has been DJ LeMahieu - for whom no defensive over-shifts apply. He simply hits balls where pitched, and he has been a Godsend. One-dimensional sluggers who either homer, strikeout or walk are not only killing the game of baseball, but they are killing the teams for which they play. If Boone's Blasters fail to win a ring this October, I now have a nomination for future Yankee manager. And then, if a guy can't bunt, maybe J-Lo will write a nasty song about him.
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Yes, yes, and yes. Morales continues to be inexplicable, both in his existence on the roster and his replacing Romine when the chips were down. He'll, if you had to PH for him, where was Mayvin? Estrada? Frazier should only play left, but Boone continues to put him in right. Cessa is another waste of roster space, and why leave him in for five runs worth of punishment? Are the big four relievers really overtaxed from pitching one inning each for two successive nights? And yet the ESPN commentators were falling all over themselves in praise of Boone's managerial skills.
Wtf was going on last night? If Frazier is to be pilloried for his lousy play in right, why does Boone get off scot-free?
Yep. And I agree, JM: we should push the reliable relievers when we have the possibility of a big win in our sweaty little paws. There are plenty of opportunities to throw the Cessas and the Surrenderers out there to eat innings. NOT in a game we still have a chance to win against Boston.
The Morales experiment is ridiculous. Beyond bunting, how about hitting to the opposite field? I know, I know: not as easy as it sounds if the pitcher is pitching you right. But like bunting, harder than ever IF YOU NEVER DO IT.
Morales' .571 OPS is now well below that of Mike Ford's (.700), Maybin's (.728), and especially the Pharaoh's (.912). This is more nonsense in the mode of how he is such a threat to hit a home run at any given time.
Morales now has 1 HR in 53 plate appearances for us. No, he is not.
CLINT, CLINT, CLINT.....
EVERY TIME HE GETS HIS YANKEE CAREER GOING, SOMETHING FUCKS IT UP.
A TWISTED ANKLE, A DISASTROUS FIELDING DISPLAY ON NATIONAL TV....
IT'S KILLING ME THAT OUR BEST FUTURE CLUTCH HITTER IS GOING TO BE TRADED...
I ONLY HOPE IT WILL BE FOR BUMGARNER, AND NO ONE ELSE.
A-Rod is absolutely right. Sabermetricians have been proclaiming for a generation that the sacrifice bunt is not worth it, that giving up an out to advance runners makes it harder to score. Modern sluggers would much rather swing for the fences and try to pull the ball out of the park, thereby advancing all the runners to the plate. Thus they eschew the bunt and never practice it. One wonders whether promising young prospects even bother bunting in the low minors or in school. But defensive shifts are brutal on pull sluggers. I'd love to see Rodriguez managing a team to dominance with a lineup of bunting sluggers, pulling balls past normal defences and bunting them past shifts. We should be long past the debate on the value of bunting, because in today's game it wouldn't be a sacrifice bunt but a base hit. It seems clear that a slugger who could reliably get down a good bunt against a defensive shift would increase his slugging percentage by the number of singles he would rack up, and when defenders stopped shifting on him he could return to swinging for the fences.
Bunting is the obvious answer, so obvious that everyone who watches or writes about baseball has been suggesting it for years. The fact that sluggers continue to stubbornly resist this obvious answer makes me wonder what everyone else is missing. I've heard explanations such as ego (the hitters are too macho to 'surrender' to the shift), money (more home runs means a better contract), or specialisation (there is no time for them to practice bunting, since it would take away from their fence swinging practice). None of these explanations really sells me, since the benefits of becoming a 'two-way' slugger who can bunt would be extraordinary. Nothing must be more deflating for a batter's ego than to go 0-5 on the night with three strikeouts and two weak groundouts. Modern general managers don't just check how many home runs a player has and write him a check; they want to know about his overall value. And I have to believe a professional can find time to work on more than one aspect of his game. Bunting is certainly more challenging than a lot of people assume, but the potential rewards of even trying it and failing (at least shaking up the shifted defenders) would make it worth the attempt.
Today a new explanation suggested itself to me - collusion! And not the kind to which we are used, where owners cooperate to try to drive down salaries. A collusion of the players, by the players, for the players! The fact is that the same sluggers who keep foolishly pounding balls into the shift will be the shifted defenders of the next half inning. They know that if everyone started bunting to the opposite field, they could end the era of the shift within a week. That they don't do this suggests that they don't want to do it, that they like defensive shifts. Maybe they all got together one evening in a shadowy hall after a union meeting, and decided it would be to their advantage to play this way. Perhaps it's more pleasant for the infielders to congregate together on one side of the field, and maybe the corners got tired of having to charge the plate on every pitch when the batter shows bunt. Or it's some sort of subtle way of getting back at ownership by ruining the on-field product and driving down revenues - or of getting back at the fans for siding with the owners in labour disputes. As long as they all pretend to be helpless against the shift, no one makes the others look ridiculous.
A shifty conspiracy lurks!
I was thinking about the Knoblauch thing last night as well. Particularly when he uncorked another really bad off line throw. He's been doing that for a while as well.
He may have to go. It's too bad. I don't think it's the kind of thing you can practice your way out of.
The no show after the game is a bad look.
He's gone from Red Thunder to, as he's been tagged here, Red Blunder and Red Menace. Not good.
Doug K.
As far as Frazier is concerned: It's mostly mental. He did not display these flaws last year (when he played) or the last few months of 2017 when he was called up. If he fielded like he does now in right he never would have rocketed through the Indian's farm system -no matter how fast his bat speed is. You can see how hesitant and "in-between" his movements are. The fear of failing on a grand scale in public must be daunting to many athletes, especially in NYC. I like this kid but he needs to see a sports psychiatrist ASAP and play in left where his anxiety level is more under control.
Concerning Morales: The sad thing, Horace, is that the Boston pitcher did not try to dissuade him from going the opposite way and getting a guaranteed base hit. He did exactly the opposite by pitching him on the outside half of the plate so as to make it harder for him to pull the ball. Maybe I'm reading too much into it but Kendrys looks like a lazy player that knows his days are numbered and doesn't seem to give a shit anymore.
As much as I think that A-Rod is a selfish, attention-seeking, self-aggrandizing putz, he is no dummy. Especially when it comes to baseball and he is usually 100% correct in his baseball analysis. I'd like to see him as a manager or GM. I think he would do well.
LOL@ Red Blunder...good one!
Who would have thought we would be looking to the return of Stanton as a defensive upgrade in right field.
I'm beginning to think Frazier is a kid who can't handle success, and sabotages himself over and over to avoid it. Like Yogi said, 90% of the game is half mental.
Der Kaiser is conflating two separate issues: bunting for a hit against the shift, and sacrifice bunting. It is not simply the "opinion" of sabremetricians that a successful sacrifice bunt reduces a team's likelihood of scoring in an inning (given an average or better hitter at the plate); this has been endlessly documented by simply having a computer examine the results of such bunts throughout the history of baseball--the additional out trumps the advance of the runners. It's all their in the run expectancy tables--any doubters can simply Google one and find out for themselves.
As for bunting against the shift for a base hit. At times this might be a sound strategy, but it will never yield more than a single (barring the occasional throwing error, of course). If you want to have power hitters taking a hundred points off their slugging percentage, trading potent XBHs for impotent singles every time they stride to the plate, then you have no idea about what actually wins ballgames.
The main issue with Frazier is last year's concussion--it has clearly left psychological scars, inflicting a case of mini-paralysis in the face of flyballs--just enough to sabotage his timing and effectiveness. As Doug K. pointed out above, his defense has never been an issue until this year, and now it appears to be in total meltdown.
The Yankees stuck with Sanchez through two seasons of crappy framing, game calling, and a torrent of passed balls--at a far more critical defensive position than right field; Torres has had extended funks at the plate and in the field. But for some unaccountable reason--traceable to the Steinbrennerian DNA that mistrusts young talent, especially if they're nice young kids--Cashman has never had the guts to commit to Frazier as firmly has he has to Torres and Sanchez. His signing of Stanton and re-signing of Gardner showed a bad--and unwarranted--case of jelly legs about Frazier. If the Yankees had given him the same encouragement they have given to the other two, he'd be an established star by now--aside from the freakish setback of the concussion, of course. Even now, Frazier should at least be getting DH priority over the hapless and disintegrating bat of Morales--but no.
Cashman can go fuck himself. Boone can go fuck himself. At this rate, the planet earth will succumb to the fires next time of climate apocalypse before we see another parade down the Canyon of Heroes.
it's all there, not their--typo; hasty typing
So... we all agree that... what?
But they don't need to bunt all the time. And it won't knock 100 points off their SLG percentage of they do it just enough to be a threat, thereby eliminating the shift.
...that Frazier embarrassed himself.
Parson Tom, thanks. I got busy before and didn't have time to post exactly what you did.
Reasons to bunt to beat the shift include 1) taking a base the other team is GIVING you, and 2) dissuading the other team from continuing to use the shift against you in the future. Both are good reasons to take the guaranteed base hit.
So:
Q: How many of these would have to happen before the opposing team stopped using the shift against a player?
A: Far fewer than it would take to lower the player's slugging percentage by 100 points.
Bunting against the shift: specificity is in order. A shitty, washed-up Specimen like Morales? Aaron Judge or Cody Bellinger in top form? Never. Some other middling guys in some conceivable situation? Yes. But as a chronic strategy? Simply dumb, a big favor to the other team.
Frazier didn't embarrass himself. He had a bad night. Are you implying that he did it intentionally? That he lacks character? That he's not a first-rate player in most other respects? That you are not a loser compared to him in almost every way?
Some facts from that musty resource known as "history":
In 1921, probably his greatest all-around season, Babe Ruth reportedly bunted safely for a hit 10 times.
In 1961, despite their blazing 87-45 record, Yanks are only 1.5 ahead of Detroit when the Bengals come to town on Sept. 1 for a showdown series. Game Two, Mantle squeezes in Maris with the tying run. Later in the Yankees' win, The Mick bunts successfully for a hit.
Does that mean he starts bunting all the time?
Of course not!
The next day, Yanks trailing 5-4 going into the bottom of the 9th, The Mick pulverizes a Gerry Staley pitch. Game tied, and Yanks go on to walk it off.
As Roger Angell once wrote, baseball presents many ways to win, and sometimes you have to grab them. Sometimes that means a bunt, or a hit to the opposite field.
All sports, all of life is situational. Sometimes you need to seize what is there.
As for the Red Menace, this does seem mental as much as anything. I know it's me, but I have less and less patience for that the older I get.
Yes, somebody on the Yanks should work with him. No, they probably won't.
But it doesn't matter what I think. The Yanks can't move Stanton or Andujar. That leaves one guy.
HC66--On the other hand, maybe you haven't spent a year barred from doing the work you've been preparing for all your life by concussion symptoms. So revealing to see the extent of your empathy and compassion, from your perch in ignoramus bloviationville.
Deal HC66 out there in Ignoramusbloviationville: Mantle had terrific speed and occasionally drag-bunted for a hit in strategic situations. That option is not available to (a) slower runners and (b) right-handed batters.
Ruth's bunts for hits occurred exactly one year into the live-ball era, when many of the unexamined folkways of the dead-ball era still prevailed.
If you only had a brain. . . .
Stanton, if and when he returns, will be an albatross on this team, average at best on defense and lagging behind his past achievements at the plate. So after he flames out, and Gardner makes his last tour as a Yankee, you'll wish Frazier was still here. He can be valuable now as a DH--releasing Morales is the only sensible option now--and occasional outfielder. His outfield play will improve with time, practice, and encouragement. He never had these problems before this year. He will get over them, just as Sanchez worked out the kinks in his defensive games, which were as bad as or worse than Frazier's, given the centrality of the catcher to team defense.
"If you want to have power hitters taking a hundred points off their slugging percentage, trading potent XBHs for impotent singles every time they stride to the plate, then you have no idea about what actually wins ballgames."
Occasionally a bunt will.
...even if you hit 59 home runs that year.
And any fucking idiot knows that Mantles knees were TRASH well before 1961. Far from blazing speed anymore.
Hey Psycho Anus--Mantle still had excellent speed after he injured his knees. And you spin moronic generalities--WHEN should a great power hitter bunt? How often? Under what circumstances? For a hit? To sacrifice? To squeeze? You don't say. You have zero acquaintance with the likelihood of success or value of any of the foregoing. You just babble your compulsive vomit. Read a book. Then see a psychiatrist, if you can find one willing to treat people who eat their own vomit for breakfast.
"WHEN should a great power hitter bunt? How often? Under what circumstances?"
Any four year old would remember this started regarding Kendrys Morales being unable to bunt. As in Sunday night's game.
But you're too fucking stupid with hate to remember that. Maybe when you age a couple of years, you will understand. Get your head out of your puckered hemorrhoid and try to follow along.
Listen, Psycho Anus--this has been a running issue on this blog since forever. You and the usual confederacy of dunces claiming that the key to winning baseball is to party like it's 1910, with all the attendant dead-ball strategies. It's not about just that one issue. HC66 just published one of his diarrhea of the keyboard posts about how Babe Ruth bunted 10 times in 1921 and Mantle a couple of times in 1961. Does "Ruth" look like "Morales" to you in your drug-induced haze? Or does "Mantle" come closer because it starts with the same letter? Even you state above that "occasionally a bunt will [win games]. . . even if you hit 59 homeruns that year." Oh really? So when did Morales hit 59 homeruns ever, or this year, if that's the sole topic? See how inherently FUCKED UP and RETARDED and INCOHERENT YOU ARE? You keep changing the subject because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. You're ignorant and stupid. Or does that how the world looks to someone like you whose brains have atrophied from excess consumption of your own puke and diarrhea? Do tell, genius.
" See how inherently FUCKED UP and RETARDED and INCOHERENT YOU ARE?"
Yes, you are pretty fucked up. Coming to a site called --- wait for it -- johnsterling.blogspot.com and complaining about -- John Sterling!
You must have been the second smartest kid at tard school! Your rank would have been lower if there had been more than 1 kid there with you.
You are pretty entertaining though. Too bad you're a one trick pony.
Hey Psycho Anus--you are obviously embarrassed about having been shown to be A MORON--yet again--on the question of bunting, dishonestly shifting the topic, etc., like an obsessive sleaze-flame Internet psychotic. So now you change the subject YET AGAIN--missing the point that this is a blog that MERCILESSLY RIDICULES STERLING and that the honorific "The Master" is sarcastic. I mean--really--what was it? Repeated blows to the head with a milk bottle by your mother?
Psycho Anus--look at the title of the blog. It's a shot against Sterling's ineptitude, starting to call a homerun on a routine flyball, as he often does . . . What else has flown over your flat head that you need spelled out for you, YOU FUCKING RETARD.
No, really, Psycho Anus--you mean YOU REALLY MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BLOG? SERIOUSLY? I mean it's obvious that you are dumber than Donald Trump, stupider than Sarah Palin, and that you make George W. Bush look like a mensa member, but this is really beyond belief. I didn't realize that anyone who could actually type could also be THAT STUPID. You should donate your brain to a neurology lab that specializes in severe mental retardation--right now. No need to wait until you pass on. Just do it now.
You're so cute when you whine. Don't forget to put on your pullups before you go to your shift at the pizza pit!
Pyscho Anus--you really seem to ENJOY being a dumbass who doesn't even understand the purpose of this blog. You revel in it. You come back for more ridicule. What a sick, stupid, piece of shit you are. Why don't you give us another of your famous doofus lectures on bunting or on how this blog really worships John Sterling? Maybe some people aren't yet acquainted with the staggering extent of your stupidity.
Quoth Psycho Anus: "Yes, you are pretty fucked up. Coming to a site called --- wait for it -- johnsterling.blogspot.com and complaining about -- John Sterling!"
Title of blog: It is high, it is far, it is . . . caught.
Moral of blog: It is infested with total retards and loser-obsessive-masochists like . . . Psycho Anus. "Caught" again, Psycho anus!
Now why don't you serve up a another couple of hundred words on the art of bunting--or something you really know something about, such as kiddie porn.
Quoth Psycho Anus: "Any four year old would remember this started regarding Kendrys Morales being unable to bunt. As in Sunday night's game.
But you're too fucking stupid with hate to remember that."
Then Quoth Psycho Anus: "Occasionally a bunt will.
...even if you hit 59 home runs that year." Gee--anyone see a mention of Morales there? Psycho Anus--terminally stupid, incoherent, and dishonest to the last. Hey, Psycho Anus--that pile of shit you just dumped on your plate is getting cold. Go have your lunch.
"… you have no idea about what actually wins ballgames."
Occasionally a bunt will.
...even if you hit 59 home runs that year.
And any fucking idiot knows that Mantles knees were TRASH well before 1961. Far from blazing speed anymore.
June 4, 2019 at 2:56 PM
Puckered's sample size said...
"WHEN should a great power hitter bunt? How often? Under what circumstances?"
Any four year old would remember this started regarding Kendrys Morales being unable to bunt. As in Sunday night's game.
But you're too fucking stupid with hate to remember that. Maybe when you age a couple of years, you will understand. Get your head out of your puckered hemorrhoid and try to follow along.
June 4, 2019 at 4:39 PM
Listen, Anal Mouse --? See how inherently FUCKED UP and RETARDED and INCOHERENT YOU ARE? You keep changing the subject because YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT. You're ignorant and stupid. Or does that how the world looks to someone like you whose brains have atrophied from excess consumption of your own puke and diarrhea? Do tell, genius.
June 4, 2019 at 5:33 PM
Puckered's sample size said...
" See how inherently FUCKED UP and RETARDED and INCOHERENT YOU ARE?"
Yes, you are pretty fucked up. Coming to a site called --- wait for it -- johnsterling.blogspot.com and complaining about -- John Sterling!
You must have been the second smartest kid at tard school! Your rank would have been lower if there had been more than 1 kid there with you.
You are pretty entertaining though. Too bad you're a one trick pony.
June 4, 2019 at 10:24 PM
Anal Mouse:
I am obviously embarrassed about having been shown to be A MORON--yet again--on the question of bunting, dishonestly shifting the topic, etc., I am an obsessive sleaze-flame Internet psychotic. So now I change the subject YET AGAIN--missing the point that this is a blog that has real fans and not obsessed millennials?
June 4, 2019 at 10:40 PM
Anal Mouse said...
No, really, Puckered--you mean YOU REALLY MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE BLOG? SERIOUSLY? I mean it's obvious that you are dumber than Donald Trump, stupider than Sarah Palin, and that you make George W. Bush look like a mensa member, but this is really beyond belief. I didn't realize that anyone who could actually type could also be THAT STUPID. You should donate your brain to a neurology lab that specializes in severe mental retardation--right now. No need to wait until you pass on. Just do it now.
June 4, 2019 at 10:50 PM
Anal Mouse said...
You're so cute when you whine. Don't forget to put on your pullups before you go to your shift at the pizza pit!
June 5, 2019 at 12:26 PM
PUckered said...
Anal Mouse –I really ENJOY being a dumbass who doesn't even understand the purpose of this blog. You revel in it. You come back for more ridicule. What a sick, stupid, piece of shit you are. Why don't you give us another of your famous doofus lectures on sabermetriss or on how this blog really worships sucks? Maybe some people aren't yet acquainted with the staggering extent of your stupidity.
June 5, 2019 at 3:30 PM
Anal Mouse said...
Title of blog: It is high, it is far, it is . . . caught.
Moral of blog: It is infested with one total retard – Puckered.
Now why don't you serve up a another (sic) couple of hundred words on the art of bunting--or something you really know something about, such as kiddie porn.
June 5, 2019 at 3:34 PM
PUckered said...
Quoth Psycho Anus: "Any four year old would remember this started regarding Kendrys Morales being unable to bunt. As in Sunday night's game.
But I’m too fucking stupid with hate to remember that."
Gee--anyone see a mention of my sample size there? I’m terminally stupid, incoherent, and dishonest to the last.
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