As an explanation of my absence, allow me just to post his photo.
Okay, so you can't be too mad at me for f***ing off for a while, I made a human being.
Yeah yeah, he's rad, pees a lot, poops a lot, eats a lot, best thing that ever happened to me, blah blah blah...
LET'S TALK SOME BASEBALL!!!
I'm not going to get into Spring Training and what I think of the whole team just yet, I just wanted to write something that had been on my mind for a while, and obviously it has to do with the title.... the Lind-y Hop! Here's what that means.
The Blue Jays need to hop on the back of Adam Lind.
What? What about Bautista? Lawrie? Romero? Santos?
Those guys are great players. Lawrie gives me a half-lob. But the Blue Jays are only going to go as far as Lind carries them (or whoever is hitting fourth, but Lind will have to hit his way out of that spot, which I sure as hell hope he doesn't).
The Jays have an interesting strategy at the top of their line up. It's not altogether unique, but in my mind it is short sighted. They want guys with great OBP (Escobar and Johnson) to hit, walk and will their way on to first base in front of Jose Bautista and then sit there so that he actually gets pitches to hit, he can smash some bombs, rope some doubles and cash guys in. This is why Rajai Davis was hitting 9th not leadoff last year. First, his BA is usually fine but he rarely walks, leading to a poor OBP, and secondly they didn't want him getting on, swiping second and then Bautista getting nothing but low breaking balls to look at or spin himself into the ground at. The same can be said for the approach this year as it looks. No real wheels from either Yunel or Kelly (Yunelly?), so it's station to station for the top 3 guys.
Here's why this is flawed:
1-You need to have faith in your clean up hitter. I know most teams are sticking their best hitter at the 3 spot nowadays but you have to believe that, over the long haul, your 4th guy is going to make your opponents pay for not pitching to your 3 guy enough so that they can't automatically walk him unless its pushing across a run.
2- You have to put the pressure on the other teams D. Get guys moving to cover bags, let your 2 guy hit and run, rock some double steals. Maybe the pitcher has the baserunner dancing off first in his head just enough that he rushes his fastball to the plate and it flattens out and becomes BP. And if that means we have guys on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out, or a guy at 2 with one out, and they don't want to pitch to Bautista, then Lind has to make them pay for putting on an extra baserunner.
The only way that Bautista is going to see the fastballs he REMs about is if Lind puts in the mind of managers that he's a bad bad man. Pujols needed Matt Holliday. Bautista needs Adam Lind. The Blue Jays need to not put their whole offensive game plan around one man, even if he does have a sexy latin stubble beard.
Hence, The Lind-y Hop!!
Oh, and AJ Burnett broke his orbital bone bunting in spring training for Pittsburgh. What a dummy.They say it could heal as fast as 7-10 days.... let's see how long he milks this one. Oh boy.
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