Maldy is going to get the entire lineup sick. It's not even the worth the risk man. Dusty treats him like he's the most important player on the team.
Remember that Maldy hid multiple major injuries so Vasquez wouldn't take any of his starts last year. He won't give Diaz any chance to usurp him. Dusty already gives him his pitchers immediately after Diaz has shutout performances with them.
Seriously what gives between Maldy and Dusty ? It’s the stubborn old school “I won’t trust a rookie catcher bias” even though Diaz is a far superior batter, better on defense , has called excellent games and can catch the freaking ball. Dusty needs to pull his head out of his a$$
Yordan hitting anywhere below 4th is a waste of his bat. Tucker and Bregman have been hot but that shouldn't be keeping Alvarez lower in the lineup. I guess Dusty is making Alvarez earn his way back up the lineup. As far as Diaz not playing, not shocking. This is what most of us expected once the lineup got healthy. Maldy is going to be the main catcher as long as he's healthy.
The word is Dusty was going to bat Yordan 3rd but Yordan requested this batting order saying Tucker earned the 3rd spot. We know Dusty avoids batting LH bats back to back so that puts him 5th.
This is by Yordan’s request… Also, Maldy has consistently caught Framber/Javier. Not consistently caught France/Brown/Bielak as of late, but my guess is that Diaz has to catch at least 2 out of those 3 for any of this to make a semblance of sense.
Out of shape… less stamina… hasn’t pitched every 4th-5th day for this much of a season… poor mechanics… Do you need more reasons? He has had an uptick in velocity and spin after he had some more rest before/after the ASB… but now we’ll see what he does on “regular” rest after a few starts.
So maldy is sick and needed confirmation it's not covid before he was cleared to play. Any other player can sneeze and gets two rests days. ****ing hell