Ah, Spring Training, the time new starts, stories of people losing weight, and people giving excuses for their bad performances from the year before. Of course you have to be a player to enjoy these things I guess because Dusty is still doing the same old stupid stuff, and having stupid reasons for doing them.
Last year Brandon Phillips batted 4th for most of the season and ended the year with a .754 OPS, which is good for 105th in the NL when you browse ESPN.com and sort the numbers. Of course Dusty has to know this because right after stating Brandon will still be hitting 4th, he was quoted as saying,
?Brandon will have a good year," Baker said. "You struggle sometimes a little bit in third or fourth year. Brandon will readjust. Sometimes they wouldn?t throw Brandon a lot of strikes. Sometimes when you?re in the middle of it, you can?t see it. When you?re smart like Brandon, you take some time away and you step back and see things.?
Well of course they weren't throwing him a lot of strikes because he swings at 33% of pitches out side of the strike zone (O-swing%), and only hit those pitches 52% of the time(O-contact%). About 50% of the time he was thrown a strike. Phillips ranks near the leagues highest in O-swing% and lowest O-contact%. When you combine those numbers you get pitchers throwing you a lot of balls, and you getting very low walks. So to turn those numbers around he will really need to improve his plate discipline. Something he has always lacked, and something hard to learn. I must ask, why didn't Brandon see these things the year before?
Of course my biggest bitch is that Dusty in looking for reasons to bat Brandon 4th instead of noticing that he has better options. My main example is that Edwin Encarnacion should be batting no lower than 4th in the Reds line up, but we are asking a lot of Dusty to notice that considering he batted Adam Dunn 7th last year at times because his BA was too low.
I can't wait for our 1st 4 hitters in our line up to be the 4 lowest OBPs in our line up. You just know its going to end up exactly like this.
This whole blog post just made me notice on a whole new level how terrible this teams offense is going to be.
Last year Brandon Phillips batted 4th for most of the season and ended the year with a .754 OPS, which is good for 105th in the NL when you browse ESPN.com and sort the numbers. Of course Dusty has to know this because right after stating Brandon will still be hitting 4th, he was quoted as saying,
?Brandon will have a good year," Baker said. "You struggle sometimes a little bit in third or fourth year. Brandon will readjust. Sometimes they wouldn?t throw Brandon a lot of strikes. Sometimes when you?re in the middle of it, you can?t see it. When you?re smart like Brandon, you take some time away and you step back and see things.?
Well of course they weren't throwing him a lot of strikes because he swings at 33% of pitches out side of the strike zone (O-swing%), and only hit those pitches 52% of the time(O-contact%). About 50% of the time he was thrown a strike. Phillips ranks near the leagues highest in O-swing% and lowest O-contact%. When you combine those numbers you get pitchers throwing you a lot of balls, and you getting very low walks. So to turn those numbers around he will really need to improve his plate discipline. Something he has always lacked, and something hard to learn. I must ask, why didn't Brandon see these things the year before?
Of course my biggest bitch is that Dusty in looking for reasons to bat Brandon 4th instead of noticing that he has better options. My main example is that Edwin Encarnacion should be batting no lower than 4th in the Reds line up, but we are asking a lot of Dusty to notice that considering he batted Adam Dunn 7th last year at times because his BA was too low.
I can't wait for our 1st 4 hitters in our line up to be the 4 lowest OBPs in our line up. You just know its going to end up exactly like this.
- Taveras
- Gonzalez
- Bruce
- Phillips
- Votto
- Edwin
- LFer
- Hernandez
- Pitcher
This whole blog post just made me notice on a whole new level how terrible this teams offense is going to be.
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