Monday, June 29, 2009

A point of clarification on...baserunning blunders

So let's see if we've got this straight:

When Alex Rios goofs up on the basepaths, it's because he is stupid and lazy he doesn't care. ("Who gives a fuck!")

When John McDonald goofs up on the bases, it's because he is a super gritty hardworkin' manly man who just tried to make too many good things happen all at once, and the fates conspired against him.

So...The Gazelle doesn't care if the Jays win, and Johnny Mac cares too much.

Glad that we cleared that up.

13 comments:

Alex said...

yeah it's (soft) racist crap..

Anonymous said...

Amen

bkblades said...

But J-Mac is gamely spending his nights on the bench! He's so lovable, how can you not root for him? Cito is so stupid. He should bench Rios' lazy ass (oh, and Wells should be released) and put guys like Johnny Mac, who wants to play!!!

Gag me.

Anonymous said...

Circumstance. The blunders are apples and oranges. Rios blunders were not tagging up on a routine fly ball and I didn't see the other one but it was something fairly routine. McDonald I would argue bought a good pick off move. In closing there was another factor involved in McDonald's blunder while it is perceived that Rios' blunders were the result of his baseball judgement and not the play of another player.

Anonymous said...

Ridiculously simplistic comparison of the two scenarios, but i'm sure you know that. Just curious as to who was defending JMac that prompted this?

Navin Vaswani (@eyebleaf) said...

Big ups, Tao.

Anonymous said...

Gotta call bullshit on this one - McDonald was trying to get an aggressive lead for a bunt he knew was coming, and got nailed by a good guess/ good pickoff move...Rios on the other hand, consistently displays a lack of baseball instincts and the INABILITY TO COUNT HOW MANY OUTS THERE ARE...

stop inventing racial bias where it doesn't exist...you could flip their names and skin colour and Rios would still be an idiot...

plain_g said...

i gotta agree with the invented racial bias on this one. j-mac bit on a move, rios was lolly-gagging.

QJays said...

I know JMac is on the bench a lot, and his opportunities are few, but it seems to me his picked-off record is a relatively bad one, and it comes in pinch-running situations (late innings, close games). Might be my own sample bias, but this has happened in the past.

Tao of Stieb said...

You know, I never said that there was racial bias here. I didn't even really insinuate it.

I'm just saying that people sometimes have such blind love for the plucky underdog that they discount the abilities of the players who are actually good on a regular basis.

Also, you're all racists.

Stedron said...

McDonald is wasting a roster spot.

Commence ripping me.

DoubleA said...

I agree with Stedron. Sorry, dude, no ripping here. The one thing this team doesn't need is late inning defense. However, if he could learn to pitch left handed - I'd be more inclined to bring in JMac than Ryan or Carlson for late inning lefty needs...

Seriously, are other teams laughing at us when our pinch hitters are/were the likes of Russ Adams and Joe Inglett?

Ty said...

I know hating on Johnny Mac is the cool thing to do these days, but I don't understand how anyone who even knows a little bit about baseball couldn't see that there's a HUGE difference situationally between McDonald's mistake, and Rios' mistakes.