Sunday diversion is not so super, unless …

you are a baseball fan
I am reliably informed through various media that today is the last day of the football season. Finally!

In honor of that, and the fact that pitchers and catchers report to spring training (officially) in two weeks, here is Rob Neyer getting into the psychology of Big Stud Power Hitters. (Actually, he is writing specifically about Mark Teixeira’s troubles batting left-handed into an over shift.)

What he is really getting at is if someone who made his money hitting for home runs and driving in runs (and who has a long-term contract) will do The Little Things that will help his team (indulge me: taking a bunt to get on base is not as valuable an outcome as a home run but is so much more likely than a HR as to be more valuable a behavior). The guy is, as they say, a professional hitter; he should be able to bunt safely against the shift upwards of 65% of the time and (if he gets good at it) get some doubles out of it until the left fielders start to cheat that way.

If he does this consistently, then maybe they over-shift less and less. And then he gets to do what he really wants to do: hit lefty against a conventional defense. If he is hitting 3rd in the order, he should do this every time. Two outs, bottom of 9th, down 1 run: Yanks have a better shot at scoring one run with him on base than with him swinging away, I am pretty sure the SABR guys would agree.

Interesting.

If you really want to get into the weeds on this, check the FanGraphs piece (and comments, where the good stuff is) that Neyer works off of.

a handy spelling guide (that no longer rhymes)
By the way, for the rest of you who cannot remember where to put Mark’s i’s and e’s, try this:

I before E
except after C
or when sounding like A, as in neighbor and weigh,
or in the names of Big Stud Power Hitters who need to learn to bunt
 

© Sandy Mattingly 2012