Hunter reminds me of a young Kevin Bass, he is good at just about everything but not great at anything. Dude can run, hit, fast and throw but probably will never be a STAR however if he turns out to be Bass I'd be happy.
Spoiler Sigh... I know I fail, but I figured it out and this image is much better. I wish I had contributing member status Mods can delete previous post if possible
erm, please remove our great city's name from that horrible graphic. thank you! (if you can't contribute to edit, you can always pull the graphic down from wherever you're hosting it. trust me: the box with the little red 'x' in it will look better than that! )
No doubt, I was thinking the exact same thing last night. His game-winning hit against SD was yet another example of his strength. He kind of reached out and slapped the ball almost to the wall in deep left center at MMP. Speaking of Pence, I posted this thought a couple of pages back: It seems to me that Pence needs to slow down his bat on some of his swings. It's OK to swing for the fences once in a while in the right counts but even when he chokes up just trying to make contact, he has these hyper spaz swings and ends up topping a lot of breaking balls. He needs to relax a little and stay back, esp. in 2 strike counts. If he can just ease up a little on his swing here and there, I see him hitting a lot more doubles and becoming a much more consistent hitter. It's fine to take full cuts in certain situations but I don't think the dude realizes his own bat speed and strength. He doesn't need to swing that hard all the time. I think he's missing out on a lot of singles and doubles because of this issue.
Another thing I still can't figured out is why Pence sucks so bad at stealing bases. Over the course of his career, he's been caught nearly half of the time. It can't simply be an issue of him lacking speed. There are clearly slower players who are much more effective. I don't know if he's tipping when he's about to steal or what but he's doing something wrong.
That makes sense given all the position changes. If he can hit at this level, he could still maybe serve as a pinch-hitter. A lot of PHers aren't great defensively, just good enough to fill in for an inning or two.
I think it comes down to being a bad base stealer, some guys do it well others not so well. I remember Willy Taveras' first year the dude got caught a ton and it was obvious the guy had incredible speed but eventually it clicked the next season. It is something Pence REALLY needs to work on because with his speed, your right, no excuse for his percentage.
I still think that a more trained eye than mine should be able to spot something he is doing wrong. There must be an identifiable problem or two. I agree that he may lack an innate sense of deception or something but I also believe that there are technical changes he should be able to make to become better at it.
I know it's just the Pirates but the Reds' starting pitching completely dominated them. 2 CG SOs, 1 of them a 1-hitter (no walks), another a 4-hitter (no walks) and Arroyo dominated them in the 1st game
Got me nostalgic and pulled up our roster for that year. Ahh, the good old days back when the Astros had this thing called talent...
Wow, what an absolutely terrible play by Keppinger. Probably the worst error of the season by an Astro. Unbelievable, he gets a chance to redeem himself on the very next play and blows the DP opportunity.
Puma walking twice tonight is VERY encouraging because even in the past when he'd slumps he'd still get on base and he hadn't been doing that.
First swing hack by Lee. I am glad that Lee got Rodriguez home, I was just kind of hoping that he would take a pitch or two and look for something he could drive.
