Martin Maldonado Appreciation Thread

I'm absolutely ecstatic that the board won't be spammed with a myriad of repetitive posts about Dusty and Maldy!

 

Verlander next.

 

Like so many Astros catchers before him he could not hit. However he did get a ring and was huge in making that happen. All the best Maldy.

Time to see Diaz do his thing.

 

Rangers will pick him and Brantley up, I'm calling it.

 

Ausmus batted 50 points higher than him in his time with the Astros.

 

I suspect just getting rid of the Dusty part would have taken care of the other part- but the only way to be sure is to kill it with fire.
To be fair- there were dedicated threads to b****ing about Maldy and Dusty and if you ventured into those as someone that didn't want to hear b****ing about Maldy or Dusty you get what you deserve.

 

Oh they'll find someone else. Probably by the 3rd inning of the 1st Spring Training game.

 

LOL...it was in every thread (and I wasn't just talking about you, btw)

 

"Can Will Wagner play SS?"

 

I think this encapsulates his time here well. He was a BUM on hitting, but did provide good leadership when not sucking at the plate.

 

Honestly, I never enjoyed watching Martin Maldonado play baseball. Not even in his prime when his arm was good. I also never saw much evidence of the great leadership, character, and camaraderie that people inside the organization always talked about. I won’t miss him. I miss Craig Biggio, and Jake Marisnick, and George SpringerDinger. But I won’t miss Martin Maldonado.

 

Amen to that. Lol.

 

He sucked at both as a batter at the plate and a catcher behind the plate.

 

He prided himself as a great recruiter and teammate just like Chandler Parsons. And was just like Chandler Parsons.

 

The important thing is, he sucked equally.

 

I don't spend a ton of time hanging out in the game threads and I don't shitpost, so I didn't figure you did. I tried really hard to confine myself to the dusty, Yainer and Maldy thread on my b****ing about them, b/c yeah- it can be a beat down for sure.
Just so glad that it's all over.

 

Yeah- I totally didn't get it. Every single thing about his public persona screamed douchebag. His shitty SoMe bullshit. His interviews where he degraded the backup catcher. His refusal to help integrate other guys into the team. I think he is basically worm tongue from the Lord of the Rings and infected the entire organization with unmitigated bullshit and broke their brains. Seriously, there was NEVER a single metric that showed pitchers pitched better to him or that there was any great benefit to his "game calling expertise", but every metric showed how shitty he was as an actual baseball player. And I always thought his gamecalling for certain pitchers sucked (looking at you Hunter Brown) as he got older and lazier about calling breaking stuff.
I think the way people talk about him is proof that we humans are dumb monkeys and can't generally explain the difference between correlation and causation, sprinkled in the biggest Halo effect from being on winning teams I've ever seen an athlete get.

 

While he was awful last season, he contributed to a WS title and was a leader in the locker room. Don't have anything bad to say about him. It's not his fault Dusty kept playing him. Wish him the best

 

A clubhouse leader doesn't throw a fit when the team explored potential competition last offseason or be passive aggressive on Instagram when the opportunity presented itself.

 

Look, I get it. I was dumbfounded that Diaz wasn't playing last year. I don't blame Maldonado that much. He's a tenured veteran who had a lot of support behind him. Dusty is a egomaniac and horrible manager. I place the vast majority of the blame on him. As I said, Maldy was awful last season but it's not his fault our worthless manager kept him in the lineup to prove a point.

We can agree to disagree on it. I don't dislike Maldy and wish him the best. On Dusty, I'll keep my thoughts on him to myself lol