Mitch Haniger's "Lost" 3-WAR Season
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Out of no mood other than sympathy, let me say. The worst possible place to be sucker-punched is, in the upper teeth, just under the nose, bending the nose up with everything else. One time a fight I know of consistent of one sucker punch, an uppercut to just that area. The victim was weeks recovering.
At 95 MPH?
However much you think that hurt, it hurt a lot more.
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I never, never, never understood the "machismo" of the Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens people who thought this showed toughness. To stand 20 yards away, wind up carefully, and throw in the vicinity of another person's head - while your teammates stood on alert to erect a picket fence between you and the victim. Every. Single. Time. a Bob Gibson or Dave Stewart nods with satisfaction about how mean he is, it makes me wonder how he is when another man is within arm's reach to hit him back. You, me, a closed room, a locked door, that's how you find out who's tough. I never saw Dave Stewart in such a room, did you?
This applies to negligence also. It doesn't matter to me whether Zaza Pachulia deliberately slid his foot into Kwahi Leonard's landing area, or whether he merely didn't care about Leonard's busted ankle. Either way, it's on Pachulia. And watch where the deuce you throw that elbow.
I know nobody asked me, but if anybody did, I'd like to see baseball take the "coolness" out of throwing at batters. Hollywood took the "coolness" out of smoking cigarettes; we can make anything "cool" or "uncool" as we so deign. There's nothing cool about what happened to Mitch Haniger. There is also nothing cool about risking what happened to Mitch Haniger.
MLB took the coolness out of using baseball bats on your enemies. Why can't it do the same about using baseballs on people?
I dunno. Maybe DeGrom was aiming low-away. Maybe Pachulia was trying to keep his feet out from under Kwahi. Either way there should still be shame attached. One simple rule would be, you hit somebody in the neck or head, a reliever comes in. Mic drop.
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Mitch Haniger has 1.2 WAR in 257 plate appearances. SABRMatt made a good call when he predicted that oblique would derail Haniger's season. Ah, well. He's still a keeper for me. Here is our March 15 BEST BET on Haniger and I'm not off it by a micron. An excerpt from that article:
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Seeing him play: what's to like? Everything. His pitch recognition looks above average. He's got excellent hand-eye coordination, good HIT ability. There's no particular pitch he can't get the bat to, that we've noticed. Beautiful aiki swing, all kinds of COILED power. And he's quick. He lets the ball travel and hits it the other way. PWR is a given. He's going to take extra bases. They rave about his Edgar-like preparation. It's just too good to be true! Why would Arizona cough him up?
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Haniger doesn't even have to hit to be a Heyward type, but of course he will. Ah, well, the rest of this year we get lots of Guillermo Heredia -- maybe he's Cespedes lite -- and some Boog Powell and maybe Dipoto will swing a deal this last weekend.
By the way, Dutton pointed out that it showed nice resiliency for the M's to win that game.
Jacob DeGrom. Bah humbug.
My $0.02,
Dr D