Jesus Montero, C
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I don't know what Jesus Montero is on any other night. But tonight, he was a Major League (TM) catcher. He ran a good show back there, man, and who was pitching?! Watch a game! If it had been Jason Varitek or Mike Zunino in his uniform, you wouldn't have been able to make a distinction. Not with your fan's eye, you wouldn't.
People are laughing at him and they seem to have little idea why; honestly, as best as I can follow the situation, Big Blog told them to, so they do it. If Big Blog told them to stop laughing, would they?
We can make .gifs of Montero. You can also make .gifs of ARod, or Josh Hamilton, or Yadier Molina. Hey, .gifs are funny. Keep 'em coming.
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Isn't it about time for a bit of balance here, though, if we aspire to be Analysts? How about a .gif of his 3.15 CERA? You didn't go into the year expecting Hisashi Iwakuma to start the All-Star Game, did you?
Or a .gif of the Mariners' team K/BB ratio? (2nd in the league, despite Saunders, Harang, Beavan, and Maurer.)
His CS% is a valid concern. It's also true, though, that the SB total is manageable. They're not running wild out there; the team run prevention as a whole is excellent right now.
If the starting catcher is a fatal flaw, how come the run prevention process isn't dying? Odd that nobody notices, Hey, the catcher's a joke, but we're snuffing runs like nobody's bidness.
It's definitely possible that Montero will have to move off catcher. How would we be in a position to know?
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Maybe Montero will turn into Ted Simmons, or maybe he'll catch 40 games a year. If he does either, he's worth a whale of a lot more than he is as a pure DH. I'm open to free money.
It would be interesting to take a clean sheet of paper and ask the question, at this point, hey, where is Jesus Montero headed really? 'Cause tonight he looked pretty good to me.
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