Catchers are not to be bulldozed; or, The tools of ignorance are not a bullseye

**NOTE: I haven't posted in a while, and if anyone does read this I apologize.  Been a rough week at work...I'll try to get back to it regularly in the coming days.**

Let's start with a confession: I've never been a catcher on a baseball field.  I never liked the idea of people that didn't know what they were doing on the mound throwing as hard as they could at me...which is where I imagine the nickname "tools of ignorance" came into being.  I need a reasonable assurance that the pitcher is going to hit my glove with some accuracy, otherwise no thanks.  I was never worried about a runner bowling me over - I'm a pretty big dude and was reasonably sure that I was the immovable object compared to most of my friends.  This was before I had a basic understanding of the physics involved with collisions.

Buster Posey had surgery on his leg this week after a collision with Scott Cousins last week to repair ankle ligaments torn in that collision along with a broken leg.  The Giants put Posey on the DL and have stated he will be out for the year - no real shock there.  Posey is a young player and a championship-caliber catcher and there's no sense rushing him back for the end of the season, playoffs or not.  Let him heal right and rehab the injury - the investment in time will be well worth the wait, I'm sure.

As for the play itself, the commentosphere and blogosphere has been a mixed bag.  Posey and the Giants management said there was nothing dirty about the play - that Cousins made a clean hit on Posey in the name of scoring the winning run.  Bochy even said he understood the the play was "a part of baseball."

I'm going to have to disagree with both viewpoints in some fashion.  First off, the Giants saying there was nothing dirty about the play does not make it a clean play - Cousins had the option to slide around Posey and still hit the plate.*  I've always been taught that baseball is not a contact sport and only under the rarest of circumstances should there be contact between opposing players, and that includes both sides of the play at the plate.  A catcher responsibility is to tag the guy out, not necessarily block the plate.

*It didn't help that Schierholtz misplayed the ball slightly, not getting a run up to the ball and shuffling his feet before the throw which made the throw a bit slower and made the play closer.  Not to blame Schierholtz - his throw was pretty darned good - but that was the first part of the chain of events.

Second, delivering a shoulder block is not "a part of baseball."  Posey probably didn't see Cousins coming - he might have heard him, but by then it was too late to get out of the way - and it's wrong to think that hitting a defenseless player is "a part of baseball."  The idea is to score runs, not points with your teammates by trying to put an exclamation point on the game.  If the catcher is giving you a part of the plate, there's no reason to clear the other side of the plate too.  It's (usually) far easier to score by going around a catcher than going through him.

On the flipside, Posey doesn't get off scott free here.  His technique was horrible...he was squatting on his knees to receive the ball instead of being on his feet as well as not securing the ball before trying to tag Cousins.  By being on his knees, instead of being knocked on his butt by Cousins he had his leg folded under him when his cleat planted in the ground and wouldn't give way while his foot nearly ripped from his ankle.  He needs to know when to block the plate and when to swipe the tag.

As for rules changes, it's a bad idea for a few reasons.  First off, legislating the game too much simply takes whatever fun is in the game out of it.  There's already a ton of rules on the MLB books, some specifically involving catchers blocking the plate...enforce those better before you think about adding more lines to an already bloated volume.  Second, umpires already have enough to worry about...subjective enforcement of the rules is already a problem (hello, HBP's) and giving fans and teams another reason to hate umpires just isn't worth it.  I also don't think it would stop home plate collisions - the temptation for a catcher to not give a runner a lane is too great and too instinctual.  Suspending players for a collision would lead to too many subjective questions: who instigated? /did the catcher leave an opening to the plate? /did the throw cause the catcher to move into the baseline?  That's just too much second guessing in my opinion.

I don't want to get into the physics of the runner/catcher collision...I'm sure Mythbusters has done something with a collision between two similarly massed objects, one at rest and one in motion.  The Cliff's Notes: The object at rest receives all of the force of the collision while giving little back in return.  People want to talk about Posey wearing "armor" - that armor protects the catcher from batted balls and wild pitches, not baserunners.  Catcher's equipment is not football pads and is not designed to take that kind of force.

This has the chance to be a great teaching moment for Buster Posey if the Giants allow it.  Find a catching instructor that can drill this into Posey while he's rehabbing his leg and maybe they'll be able to save themselves from dealing with this sort of injury again.

Quickie: Recent Cashman Scorecard

This is quick, dirty, and incomplete.  Add as you like:
-Trading for Granderson: Pretty darned good
-Trading away Coke and Kennedy: Not so good, but used properly to improve club
-Trading away Melky: Opened CF for Granderson, so very good
-Signing Feliciano: Very VERY bad...and don't whine that his previous team overused him.  Don't sign a guy that was overworked.
-Publically disavowing the Soriano signing: Good, and it's always good to show up Levine.
-Signing Martin to catch: Very good, eh?
-Not ponying up more cash for Lee: Considering he signed for more per year but for less years, I don't blame Cash for this one.  Can't really blame anyone.
-Treading carefully with young pitchers: So far that's a fail.  Joba's never going to start for the Yankees again, Hughes is on the shelf, Kennedy was used for a trade (albeit a good one)...As much as I want to see Banuelos and Betances in the majors, I fear for their arms.
-Jeter's contract: Cashman could have handled that better...that needed to stay in house.

Anyone else have anything to add?  Anything to disagree about?

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Starting Pitching, or why it should be easier to hit a home run today

I used to get all high and mighty about PED's - "they ruined the game, the users cheated, it was against the law if not baseball rules..." - and used to rail to my friends when they said Barry Bonds was one of the best baseball players of all time. (**DISCLAIMER** I wholeheartedly endorse that stance, but I use the arbitrary endpoint of 1998)  I, on the other hand, have come to the conclusion that PED's kept people on the field longer and made them healthier (relatively speaking) without improving their performance so much that it would account for the spikes in stats that occured during the early 2000's.

The funny part, or the part I don't understand, is why no one (at the time) ever talked about the pitching?  We had an expansion in 1993 that added 10 new starting pitchers, and then again in 1998 with 10 new starting pitchers (it's actually a lot more, because no team uses exactly five starters in a season anymore).  Without looking at statistical evidence, it would seem logically that the talent pool got extremely thin on the bump and the talent on the batting side stayed relatively normal.

---Yes, I know the teams that formed were stocked up by drafting from other MLB and MiLB talent.  But it is usually easier to replace batters in lineups rather than pitchers, even if the defense might not follow right away.  The other teams had to fill in their rosters from their own MiLB teams and the draft as well, but a hitter can reach the majors quickly, and pitching will lag behind.---

So, using strictly logic we've surmised that the pitching talent has lagged significantly behind the hitting talent, and offense thrived during this time period.  Last year, we noticied a reversal of this trend..."The Year of the Pitcher."  We saw no hitters, perfectos (including one near perfecto pitched by a guy that got DFAed last night) and (generally speaking) less offense than we were used to seeing.  Batting averages are down, slugging percentages are down, and ERA's are down.  We seemingly have a no-hit bid reach the 6th inning every night.

The speculation is that PED's are generally out of the game...that some people are getting around testing but most players have stayed as clean as they can.  Others speculate that increased testing for amphetamines.  I have very little doubt that these two statements are true - less old guys, more young guys and an emphasis on the draft and the minors.  But maybe pitching simply came back around?  Baseball has always been cyclical, with hitting and pitching vying for top spot and doing so in, well, cycles.  Maybe it's nothing, but maybe it's something - maybe the pitchers in baseball have simply caught up to the hitters?

It pains me to think that it is only drug testing that has brought both sides of the ball back into balance - it could also be incredibly naive of me to think PED's didn't have the effect others say they did.  The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, and I'm ok with that.  But while number two starters are throwing gems and 2-1 seems just as likely a score as 11-9 (the Indians not withstanding), I would challenge people to look at the sport as a whole and look for the more generalized viewpoint.  Pitching is coming back up to hitting, and I think it may stay that way for a while.

Diving right in: the Jorge Posada Lovefest

Tons of digital and real ink have been spilled regarding Jorge Posada taking himself out of the lineup when Joe Girardi dropped him in the order to ninth, which I thought was really nice - dude is making $13MM at the end of his (most likely) last contract in MLB, is batting a cool .165 at the time, and showed very little sign of coming out of his funk.  I get that he's prideful and arrogant - both qualities are fine and dandy in MLB players.  Along with that should come a certain amount of intelligence regarding your own production and your team's performance.

He's lucky the Yankees haven't benched him.  Besides the six homers, he's done nothing at the plate that would suggest he can still hit major league pitching.  Mistake hitters need to have some endearing quality that allows them to stay in the lineup - great defense, solid baserunning, taking lots of walks...something.  All Posada's good for right now is sucking up a roster spot that could go to another bench player until he figures out a way to be a productive DH.

I think Posada has been a fine player and a heckuva good catcher - never great but usually pretty good.  His game-calling always left something to be desired (there are other pitches besides fastball) and his receiving skills were spotty, but his bat was (until last season) enough to more than make up for his defensive shortcomings.

I'm always going to remember Posada as the guy that backstopped four World Series winners (he was barely with the club in 1996).  I can't hold a "bad day" against Jorge, but at this point he should know he's probably the 25th man.