The looong road to 500 got closer tonight. Great late-inning hitting and the bullpen balled out. Keep winning. .
If Espada doesn’t work out, I would love to see Maldy get a shot managing this team. It’s clear he has a great mind for baseball and players respond to him. Vogt has shown it’s possible for him to succeed immediately.
This where coaching should step in. Why not hire someone like Maldanado to do this very job and work with Diaz, Caratini and the pitching staff to develop game plans and pitch sequenceing and scouting?
Hope that HR can get Diaz going. I've thought all along he should catch at most 60% of the games. IMO it was foolish of them to put that much of the catching responsibility on him from a physical and mental perspective. He's young, never done it full time, and has a bat with top flight potential.
Hmm… good question. Tony Conigliaro? Ralph Kiner? In his first 8 seasons he lead the league in homers 8 times. Lead the league in walks 4 times and OPS 4 times. In his 6th season he had an OBP of .450 and was a 9 WAR hitter as a 1st baseman…. That was also the first time he went to swing the bat and he felt a sharp back pain …. Which would get to the point that by his 8th season he no longer could hit anything on the outside plate. He was best friends with Bing Crosby, dated Ava Gardner, Liz Taylor and numerous other women. He was one of the 3-4 biggest sport celebrities. Then his back broke down and he was done in the middle of his prime. He had a real shot at 650-700 homers before injury.
They have that - all teams do, there is a coach that does that and meets with the catchers. More advanced teams have several people help and have input from the advanced sciences department. The difference with Maldonado was that he was very good at it - as good or better than the coaches, and he would adjust in games when needed… he also knew when to push guys and when not to, when to meet with them, etc. Caratini is considered one of the better game managers and is considered smart and works well with pitchers. Thats why Brown wanted him so bad. Some day I am sure that Red Sox catcher Click got in trade to supplant Maldonado will talk about why he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of town.
Koufax and Richard are the natural 1/2 for pitchers off the top of my head. Here's a sad one: Lyman Bostock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyman_Bostock
