The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

It may not do anything to decide the vote, but it's fun to watch.

 

It's possible, but Brito doesn't strike me as anything special. He's a solid glove with a good approach, but he doesn't have outstanding power or speed.

 

Jones simply looked inept. But their process of evaluating hitting talent has gone haywire, the inverse of how spookily great they are at evaluating and developing pitching. They often choose to give guys like Oscar Mercado and Bradley Zimmer three years to try to figure things out while Jones gets two months.

There is something seriously flawed in the organization when guys like Jones, Benson and Owen Miller can look so woefully bad and then with a few tweaks are at least league average hitters.

Extend that to Yandy Diaz and Cleveland has jettisoned a quartet of guys who could be hitting 5-8 in their line-up.

My stupid theory is their heralded Diamond Vision system, or whatever it is called, is simply better at evaluating pitchers than hitters. When Cleveland pissed out great hitters in the 1990s it was largely old-timers like Charlie Manuel spotting and developing talent the traditional way.

Well, that and a massive amount of steroids.

 

Estevan Florial is hitting .282 with a combined 39 home runs over the past two seasons at Triple-A at 24 and 25 years old. The Yankees have given a combined 1,422 plate appearances to Jake Bauers, Oswaldo Cabrera, Willie Calhoun, Aaron Hicks, Franchy Cordero, Greg Allen and Isiah Kiner-Falefa and gotten -2.1 WAR.

Florial can't be any worse, and yet they won't give him an actual shot or trade him.

 

There's a month and about 30 games left. No reason to decide right now. I'm just going to enjoy seeing what all of three of them are going to wind up doing.

 

Either Betts and Freeman split votes and Acuna takes it or Acuna gets it because the voters go with the guy who hasn't won MVP yet, as well as the guy on the team that probably ends up with the best record in baseball

 

30. 60. MVP.

 

Nothing special could be tattooed on Nolan Jones.

 

Florial's been in the minors for NINE years.

LOL

 

Which has every chance of making a player hungrier when he gets up there. (Joey Meneses.)

 

This is why Cashman has got to go (he won't). He's either inexplicably too stubborn to give a homegrown kid a shot, or he knows Florial is a bust and worse than the dregs they are dragging out there instead. Either one is a damning indictment. It doesn't mean he sucks. It just means 25 years is a long fucking time and the Yankees need new blood, a new voice and a new approach.

 

So was Shane Spencer!