Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi:
That's not even a bad inning. A bloop hit to score a run, followed by a squeeze because his LF threw to the wrong base.
It didn't look like Peralta and/or Diaz were in the right position. Peralta was in between a cutoff position and covering third. Diaz held his position instead of being at third. On a short single that is the most common shift with runners on 1st and 2nd. On a deep hit short goes out to cut. It looked like Grichuk came up to throw and where he would normally go there was no one in place and he basically sort armed it into the infield. [Reply]
Originally Posted by VAChief:
It didn't look like Peralta and/or Diaz were in the right position. Peralta was in between a cutoff position and covering third. Diaz held his position instead of being at third. On a short single that is the most common shift with runners on 1st and 2nd. On a deep hit short goes out to cut. It looked like Grichuk came up to throw and where he would normally go there was no one in place and he basically sort armed it into the infield.
Are we talking about the same play? Diaz went out to try to catch the bloop and Grichuk came up guns blazing to the plate. He didn't even look to third. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Jewish Rabbi:
Are we talking about the same play? Diaz went out to try to catch the bloop and Grichuk came up guns blazing to the plate. He didn't even look to third.
Hard to say. With the play in front of him as he charged the ball, he could've easily known that nobody was covering 3b by the time he got there (in fact, a really good defender would have done exactly that) and if he knew that, he might as well let it fly and see if he gets lucky at home; there's no saving the play at 3b if nobody's covering the bag and there's no additional damage done by going to the plate with it. It's possible that Grichuk made a stupid play - it's equally possible that he made a really smart one. But ultimately somebody screwed that play up badly.
The bottom line is that this team is still lacking in defensive fundamentals. Whether it was Peralta or Grichuk that botched it is pretty immaterial (well, less so with Peralta as I see no reason for him to be on the field anyway).
Over 162 games, you'll see stuff like that put at least a game/month between us and the Cubs. They're just a more sound ballclub than we are. 2 games in and they have a win over us precisely because of defensive execution that they had that we didn't. And they damn near stole the first one for the same reason due to Carpenter's vapor lock.
This isn't a fundamentally sound ballclub. Because it's led by an idiot. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
Hard to say. With the play in front of him as he charged the ball, he could've easily known that nobody was covering 3b by the time he got there (in fact, a really good defender would have done exactly that) and if he knew that, he might as well let it fly and see if he gets lucky at home; there's no saving the play at 3b if nobody's covering the bag and there's no additional damage done by going to the plate with it. It's possible that Grichuk made a stupid play - it's equally possible that he made a really smart one. But ultimately somebody screwed that play up badly.
The bottom line is that this team is still lacking in defensive fundamentals. Whether it was Peralta or Grichuk that botched it is pretty immaterial (well, less so with Peralta as I see no reason for him to be on the field anyway).
Over 162 games, you'll see stuff like that put at least a game/month between us and the Cubs. They're just a more sound ballclub than we are. 2 games in and they have a win over us precisely because of defensive execution that they had that we didn't. And they damn near stole the first one for the same reason due to Carpenter's vapor lock.
This isn't a fundamentally sound ballclub. Because it's led by an idiot.
That's really disappointing too. The Cardinals have always had a history of playing good defense. Captain concussion is going to flush that if he doesn't get out of his own way. [Reply]
John Lackey goes 1st to 3rd on a single to CF because Fowler trots his ass over to get it and Lackey catches him napping. So what's Fowler do? Throws the ball up the line to Gyorko to give Jay a chance to advance from 1st to 2nd on the throw.
It's a stupid, careless baseball team and has been since Matheny got here. It's only going to get worse as guys like Holliday leave and Molina fade away. When the 'old guard' of guys that were here under LaRussa start to be replaced by these fucking knucklehead Matheny products, this team will be nigh on unwatchable. [Reply]