Quote:
Originally Posted by Al Bundy
Not if they don't give a shit. Like I said, most of the guys on the team are there to simply cash a paycheck. Perez saw Herrera shitting himself and showed he didn't care. Hell Ned didn't give a **** either, he just wanted to get home and sleep in his own bed. Maybe someone will sack up from the Royals and not let this turn into an 0-8 roadie, but I doubt it. I saw a lot of quit tonight. The Braves look like a good team, but not a team that should hit 4 home runs within a couple of innings and blow a game wide open.
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I think you're being awfully hard on a young team.
There's no tougher position to really
learn than catcher. Look at the history of teams starting rookie catchers - it's generally pretty awful. The Giants have bucked the trend, but I remember when the Cards were breaking in Molina after letting Matheny walk in 2005; I don't recall the numbers, but essentially teams were all but giving up on a legitimate playoff run if they were starting a rookie catcher.
It's just such a tough position to really learn the nuances of. And if you have a cannon like Perez, you get a little cocky back there and think that the big arm makes you a big swinging dick of a catcher. Those guys get a little complacent until they mature a bit (Pudge Rodriguez is a
classic example of this; guy couldn't call a game for shit until he went to Florida and finally started trying to learn how). I don't think Perez didn't care - I think he simply didn't realize the gravity of the situation.
I've never thought that Moose, Escobar, Gordon, or Cain were jaking it either. Frenchie...hell, I don't know. Hosmer, OTOH, you may be onto something with. I always get the feeling when I'm watching him that he's a kid that will float until a contract year and then turn into a machine for a season before he sees his baseball mortality creeping up on him in his late 20s and dials up his effort (the Adrian Beltre model).
It's a young team. It's going to be a good team. Even now it's a team that fell to .500 by losing to the best team in baseball after going toe to toe with them for 7 innings. Seems a little hysterical to quit on them already.