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2021 Series #19 | Indians @ Cardinals | June 8-9, 2021

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Tito on Mejia's problems:

He wasn’t able to work into the right-handers so he could get them off his breaking ball. I think if he could have commanded his sinker in, it would have opened up the plate away, but he just couldn’t get it there.

IMO this was not the disaster it appeared to be. He had four swings and misses and 10 foul balls along with the dribbler up the third base line. That's 15 swings that either missed of failed to make solid contact against two swings that were line drives, both by left-handed hitters.

Yadier Molina swung at six pitches and fouled all six off. The last pitch of his at-bat shows up as a strike on the ESPN diagram, but the ump called it a ball. If he gets that call he's out of the first inning with no runs allowed.

I actually think Mejia is close. He threw 63% strikes and they missed or fouled off 15 of 17 swings. His stuff moves. The knockout punch by Carpenter came of the third change-up he saw.

Mejia just needs to "command his sinker in" to right-handed hitters and occasionally throw some high heat. Right now everything is down and mostly away and 25 of the 29 pitches he threw after two out were breaking balls. He needs to be more aggressive when he's up 0-2 and 1-2 instead of teasing batters with sliders outside the zone, which the Cardinals were not chasing.
 
I was livid over Josh Naylor's first inning at-bat. He came up with a runner on third, two-out, and the Tribe up 2-0. They already had three hits off Wainwright, who hadn't found his rhythm yet. A base hit gives Mejia a three-run lead to start the game and keeps the inning going against Wainwright, who was struggling.

Naylor got ahead 2-0, then swung at the next seven pitches, five of which were out of the strike zone. One was a shoulder level fastball that the announcers were amazed he was able to get a piece of because it was about two feet out of the zone. It was ridiculous. He ended up striking out on a curveball in the dirt on the 9th pitch of the at-bat, after swinging at five bad pitches.

It looked like he wanted the RBI so bad he refused to be walked. He only has 15 RBI's this season. With runners in scoring position he's hitting .163. With RISP and two out it's .167. With nobody on he's hitting .273. It's obvious that he's trying too hard when he gets in RBI situations and he starts hacking at every pitch he sees. He gets himself out time after time in his most important at-bats. It very much reminds me of Lindor the last couple of seasons.

There's a reason Naylor rarely drives in a run. They need to sit him down, show him the at-bats and how pitchers are taking advantage of his hyper-aggressiveness, and get him to understand that when runners are in scoring position you need to be more patient, not less.
 
I'm so old that....

A kid got a good baseball in early spring and used it until the cover came off. Then when the cover came off, he wrapped it in black electrical tape and kept playing. Talk about sticky stuff on a baseball.

When the first baseball finally became unplayable, the kid scrounged up a quarter and bought a new ball that was packed with sawdust. That ball quickly (about three batters) became lopsided. It did funny things when it was thrown.

Today's pitchers, with all their sticky stuff, had nothing on a ten year old pitcher back then.

***********

There was one nationally broadcast game a week...on Saturday afternoon. Every kid knew the Gillette razor jingle...to look sharp and to feel sharp, too....he got to see Mantle and Mays and Clemente and Aaron and Musial.

He didn't get to see Colavito, because nobody nationally cared about the Cleveland Indians. Unless....

A Tribe game was broadcast locally, which happened maybe five times a year.

Kids listened to the radio, and radio announcers were stars. Kids knew them as well as they knew the best players.
 
CATS44 said:
I'm so old that....

A kid got a good baseball in early spring and used it until the cover came off. Then when the cover came off, he wrapped it in black electrical tape and kept playing. Talk about sticky stuff on a baseball.

When the first baseball finally became unplayable, the kid scrounged up a quarter and bought a new ball that was packed with sawdust. That ball quickly (about three batters) became lopsided. It did funny things when it was thrown.

Today's pitchers, with all their sticky stuff, had nothing on a ten year old pitcher back then.

***********

There was one nationally broadcast game a week...on Saturday afternoon. Every kid knew the Gillette razor jingle...to look sharp and to feel sharp, too....he got to see Mantle and Mays and Clemente and Aaron and Musial.

He didn't get to see Colavito, because nobody nationally cared about the Cleveland Indians. Unless....

A Tribe game was broadcast locally, which happened maybe five times a year.

Kids listened to the radio, and radio announcers were stars. Kids knew them as well as they knew the best players.
Click to expand...
you could afford electrical tape??
 
  • Haha
Reactions: jup
My in laws are your guys age and I never thought of them as old. Maybe because they were in their 50s when I met them. 50s @LL3 dont seem that old because I’m closer to that than I am to being legally allowed to drink now.

But...as I think about who you all watched play growing up, it gives some perspective.

Turns out all of you ARE some old SOB’s.

FRT glad you’re posting here!
 
Lee said:
I remember when Cy Young was dominating for our high school team and he was talking to me about spin rate.

150 years later, its still all about spin rate.
Click to expand...
Jup had him using horse poop from the farm to increase spin rates. He said if Cobb cheats, we should too
 
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