Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Poor Craig - dude's legs just never came back and you can't hit without a lower half.
Taveras would've been a hell of a Mabry measuring stick. He came to the bigs and showed a much longer swing than I expected and was a lot more susceptible to hard stuff than I had been led to believe. That long, loopy swing had a lot of casting in it and combined being slow with not generating a lot of authority.
But when you looked at his minor league numbers, you know there's a hitter there somewhere with the right adjustments. He knew how to approach at-bats and it wouldn't have taken a complete overhaul, just some changes in his how his hands went to the dish, IMO.
If Mabry could've have gotten him on the right track, it would've been a feather in his cap. Had he continued to struggle...well shit, Mabry's probably gone by now in an attempt to save the golden prospect.
Sadly, we'll never know. I don't believe he was the no-questions asked superstar that many others did, but I think there was a lot of good clay to work with there and we'd have had a pretty good test of Mabry's ability.
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Goold told a story on the podcast about Mabry. The final game of the Brewers series we got owned by a minor league pitcher. He didn’t really have good stuff. So he asked the hitters what happened. No one would talk on the record. But off the record they said the scouting report was over 30 days old. It was his first game in the majors because he had developed a good slider. No one on the Cardinals major league team knew this.
He went to Matheny and Mabry and asked why the report was 30 days old. They got mad and said they work hard. No comment. But, they didn’t deny it. He said he was told by the players that old scouting reports happens a lot. He can’t write about it because noone wants to go on the record.