Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Back to the Basics


Hidden in the Mets' seven game winning streak were fielding gaffes and baserunning lapses, and they finally reared their ugly heads in their series against the Braves. Between David Wright's poor throwing arm and refusal to charge balls and get played by bad hops and Jose Reyes' curious baserunning decisions -taking a massive risk going for a triple in the eighth inning of the second game, running on a ground ball to short and walking into a Larry Jones tag and the icing on the cake, cadillac-ing around the bases on a deep fly ball to left center that bounced off the top of the fence- there is a general sloppiness to the team that wasn't nearly as damaging when they could outslug opponents with Carlos Delgado in the lineup. Wright and Reyes are not the only culprits, but the highest profile ones: Luis Castillo also refuses to play ground balls and waits for them, and Daniel Murphy still plays left field on rollerskates. Manager Jerry Manuel and bench coach/infield instructor Sandy Alomar Sr. can run as many drills as they want, but perhaps new voices are needed to reach to the players, voices like Tom Emanski -winner of back-to-back-to-back AAU national championships- and Fred McGriff -"these are the instructional videos that GET RESULTS!"

3 comments:

coachie said...

Or a pep talk from Tim Duncan, who Shaq once derisively called "Big Funda(mentals)"

McGriff's wagging finger rival's Arsenios. Should be dipped in bronze and displayed in downtown Tampa.

Mattingly's Mustache said...

would mullah omar be tim duncan in the spurs movie? The Big Fundamentalist.

Clearly McGriff would be played by McGruff.

coachie said...

mullah omar. hmmm. too big?

mcgriff would be played by keenan ivory wayans