Gerry Callahan: Slow on the Uptake…or Worse?
I have no delusions of grandeur with respect to our little site here. We have a tidy little following, one that will allow us to post our 100,000th unique visitor in the next week or so, but nothing too big. That said, we have been getting enough traffic of late so that it would not be out of the realm of possibility that some professionals lay eyes on our work. With that said, here is the beginning of Gerry Callahan’s column in today’s Boston Herald suggesting that – get this – David Ortiz should bunt every time other teams put a shift on.
He could, in theory, hit 1.000, slug 1.000 and get on base 100 percent of the time.
Here’s what I had to say yesterday…
I am confident that he can execute the play, like I said before, 80% of the time. So on plays where the shift is on, David Ortiz can hit at a .800/.800/.800 clip, which is better than his typical .290/.400/.600 line to which we have grown accustomed.
Maybe I was thrown by a well-reasoned thought coming from a mainstream baseball columnist that includes slugging and on-base numbers? Maybe the fact that I don’t particularly care for Callahan’s work is clouding my judgment? Whatever it is, I wrote about the very same topic yesterday and touched on the very same points. Well, except for the gushy David Ortiz is the awesomest teammate stuff.
I won’t go any further than that. Just interesting, I guess.
Callahan doesn’t think he stole your idea because he bumped your Ortiz #s up from .800 to 1.000!!!
The thing is, they would just change the shift a little bit, and bring the 3rd basemen back to his original location, playing like he would with figgins. Then, you take the shortstop and 2b and stack them on the right side of the infield. It’s exactly as effective.
Ortizzle’s hitting chart:
http://boston.redsox.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/stats/individual_player_hitting_chart.jsp?c_id=bos&playerID=120074&statType=1
We need to make sure that Ortiz still has the ability to drop down the bunts without everyone figuring it out, so we just use it when absolutely necessary.
Plus, how often is he up with no one on?
You stole my idea hack.
By the way, I like a dark skin player. I demand that is noted.