When is the last time you were able to catch an ML CF not-in-stride when the ball was hit?
I see this happen ALL the time. Last night Melky Cabrea misjudged at least 5 balls hit to him. Moved in and then had to race back, or sprinted out to the wall just to have to come back for it. Lucky for him the M;s were just hitting lazy pop flys that he had mucho time to settle under, but a line drive to the track like F-Gutz ran down (incidentally off Cabreas bat) the other night? He wouldn't have gotten close enough to even catch with a lacrosse stick!
In the first game against NY there were several bloopers that Damon, Cabrea and the rest of the so so defenders the yanks have in the outfield let drop in for base hits, not because they weren't fast enough to get them, and not because the ball didn;t stay in the air for a good long time, but because it took them to a count of 3 to decide whether to run up or run bakc, to run right or run left. Who cares if you have all the speed in the world if you don;t know what direction to run? And if you are unsure of where to run you certainly WONT be running at top speed, where as a guy like Franklin who DOES know where to run and the correct path to get there can run as fast as possible to get there because he is sure of himself. That is where a lot of the big difference between foot speed (needed to steal bases) and playing speed (the speed at which you actually play) comes from. It is similar to why a guy like Yvenson Benard can run all over the Pac-10 even though he only ran about a 5 second 40. Yv had the vision and instict to play at a high speed.
Anyways, the stats back Taro and other up F-Gutz runs UZR's that are 1.5 times BETTER than Camerons, who many people think was the best CF of all time!
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