.

I'll give you a belief of mine that I know to be suspect.  There aren't many things like that we have, hopefully, where we maintain a conviction despite the sneaking suspicion that there is something fishy about what we believe...

I've always been annoyed by the feet-first slide, like I'm annoyed by the fact that Justin Smoak won't bunt to beat the shift.  Well, not that annoyed; Smoak's refusal to bunt is an egregiously self-destructive decision, while feet-first sliding is at least debatable.

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Mr. ESPN

I'm 95% sure I remember this M's history right; 19 chances out of 20 I've got it the way it was.  Mo' can correct me if I'm wrong.

Harold Reynolds had a plaintive way about him from the time he was a minor leaguer.  It took him parts of four years to get established, and he'd come up and hit .144, and they'd send him back down, and that winter he'd be quoted "They gave me what, a hundred at bats?  That's not a chance!"

In 1986, at age 25, he got pretty established, as a bad-but-young baseball player.  Dick Williams put him at 2B because "I don't like balls going through the right side of my infield."

In 1987, Harold became a minor star, with sabermetrics not yet established in the game.  He hit .275, and he led the league in stolen bases, with 60, and he was an excellent defender as I recall, anyway.  His OPS+ was 80 and his WAR was probably like 2.5, but at the time he was an "obvious" All-Star.

.........

In 1988, Harold stopped sliding head first.  This part I remember like it was yesterday; it could still be wrong, but it's vivid in my mind.  He brought a foot-first slide to camp, and here is how his SB percentage changed:

From 1988 on, I've watched this issue, sliding feet first vs. head first.  Two words.  Rickey Henderson.

In 1989, guess what Harold's percentage was?  25 stolen, 18 caught.  The Mariners told him to stop running.  I remember him on an interview, sourly complaining that it was the Mariners' fault -- they told him to be sure not to get picked off 1B "and then they get on me for my stolen base percentage!"  He wanted to keep running.

..........

The next year, Ken Griffey Jr. came to the bigs.  The Mariners put him in TV ads.  Harold complained bitterly.  "I think that's weak," he said, putting a kid like that into the front of the storied Seattle Mariners tradition with no dues paid.

.........

You can probably guess about Dr. D's reaction when Reynolds got buried in litigation for harassment at ESPN.  Now he's on the saber show, pooh-poohing sabermetrics...

Sigh.  We don't mean to be gruff about it.  We're giving our "flavor text," as to why we FEEL the way we do about feet-first sliding.  My emotional flinch about it -- and this flinch is wrong -- is that it is selfish, like swinging away against the shift.

There.  A fresh paradigm for you.  Feet-first sliding is wrong.  How's that grab ya?

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Art and Science, Dept.

There's an argument to be made that head-first sliding is dangerous.  Some people surely avoid it because of sincere worry about injury.  Here's an example article on the issue.

I've always figured that the head-first slide is worth 1 foot, maybe 2 feet, provided you power yourself into the bag just right.  Recently this prof managed to convince most of the world that it does give a significant advantage ... they try to limit it to maybe 5 inches.

I don't buy that, 5 inches.  Your entire center of gravity, your momentum, is messed up when you force yourself to throw your feet out in front of you (you rotate your spine the wrong way, and you can't make that last push forward).  To say nothing of the fact that your fingers are father in front of your CG/momentum than your toes are.

Is head-first sliding dangerous?  Well ... how often do you get ankles and knees injured going in feet first?  Maybe not quite as often.  Hard to say.  The thing is, and this part many of us DO know about from experience, it feels kind of scary diving in.  I mean, the third baseman swats you in the face with a big hunk of leather.

Anyway.  Dangerous or not, Brad Miller is diving in reach reach RREEAAACCCCHING those fingers for the bag, and it says here that he gets a big advantage from it.  Some men, the head first dive is a metaphor for their entire sports experience.

Every time he gets those fingers just in there, I'm going to bask.  :- )  Wasn't kidding you:  Brad Miller is fun to watch.  Like Pete Rose fun to watch.

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Fly By Your ... Instincts, Not Your Instruments, Jack

It's a funny thing.  You get the idea that with Justin Smoak, Jesus Montero, and Dustin Ackley, the Mariners took them because they were pedigreed.  They were logical.  They were sabermetrically the right choices.  To be fair, probably Mike Zunino was in this category.

You get the idea that with:

• Nick Franklin, a rrrreeeeach in the 1st round
• Brad Miller, a 2nd-rounder
• Kyle Seager, a 2nd-rounder (? right?)
• Taijuan Walker a rrreaachh in the 1st round

That Jack took guys he really loved.   Probably Danny Hultzen is in this second category.  Mike Blowers, of all people, already brought up the idea of Seager 3B - Franklin 2B - Miller SS as a 10-year Dodger style infield.

Zduriencik was born to scout, don't you think?