Chuck, Live from Kissimmee (3/14/2011)

I’ve watched too many spring games to believe that what you see in March is what you’ll see in April. But I wouldn’t mind seeing some consistency out of the projected starting pitching, some decent defense, no further base running injuries and maybe a little hitting out of the team’s touted prospects.

I’d dreaded recapping the last five games I’d seen. And so I hadn’t.  They were mostly shitfests, variations on the same theme. But apparently spicy Vietnamese crawfish give Limey an adrenaline burst and he managed to beat me to it. Thanks, Limey!

Let me first address the Bill Hall – Cole Hamels standoff. This is really all on Laz Diaz. Remember, Carlos had just hit a home run. Hall strides to the plate, raises his right hand to signal for time like he always does as he digs in and readies himself. I personally don’t think Hall takes an inordinately long time – he scrapes four or five times with his back foot, taps the bat, grabs it with the back hand and is ready to go. Hamels was obviously pissed that he’d left the last pitch up. I’d noticed that when Carlos emerged onto the on-deck area he didn’t use any sort of weight, he just had his bat and didn’t even swing it to warm up at all. He stood there with the bat on his shoulder and watched the warm-up pitches. He strode out into the batter’s box and smashed the first pitch he saw over the left field fence.

So Hamels is pissed. Hall enters the box and has his back hand up asking for time. He’s looking down at the dirt as he readies himself. I have no idea what Diaz was looking at because he’s just standing there with his hands hanging naturally, not signaling time out at all.  Hamels goes into his wind-up and about midway through Hall realizes that Hamels is trying to pitch to him right about the same time that Diaz realizes that he should have been signaling time out. Diaz waves his arms for time out and Hamels stops his delivery mid-stream.

Hall again raises his back hand, his right hand, and digs in. This time Diaz is raising his hands, too. Hamels ignores all of this and begins his motion. He’s still pissed and is intent to pitch. Hall seems to know that Diaz has time out so he’s not looking at Hamels, but Diaz is. Once Hamels gets into his wind-up Diaz shouts for time out and Hall, annoyed, steps out of the box entirely and takes a couple of steps, takes a breath, composes himself and does it all over again.

At last Hamels waits until Hall drops the hand and, more relevantly, until the home plate umpire gives him the signal to pitch. Hamels winds up and delivers a fastball high and tight, chest high, maybe ten inches off the plate. It’s not meant to hit Hall, but definitely meant to deliver a message. Hall steps out of the box with his left foot, right foot still in the box. He knows what’s happened, of course, but he’s calm. Hamels gets the ball back from Ruiz and turns towards the mound and after a step or two suddenly turns back towards the plate and shouts something at Hall. Hall stiffens up, surprised, and then strides towards the mound, shouting at the pitcher. Diaz immediately jumps in front of Hall and shoves him back although Hall never made a move to charge.

Hall is not the bad guy here. Hamels got taken deep, was a dick, was a dick again, threw inside to Hall and then chirped about it. Fuck that prick. Hall got a knock his next at bat and was followed by a Chris Johnson home run. When CJ crossed the plate Hall slapped his open palm forcefully on Johnson’s chest, shouting in catharsis.

What else?

Steele had, what, five at bats? He never managed to get the ball out of the infield. He’s fast, though, I can tell you that. Drew Locke gave the Phillies their tying run. With a runner on third he caught a fly in very shallow right and his throw sailed over the cutoff man and was at least fifteen feet up the line. It was a shockingly bad throw, worse than anything Pence could dream up. I have no idea why Martinez was sent back to the minors camp while the team continues to evaluate Steele, Shuck and Locke.

The Phillies’ winning run came on a colossal, Little League style fuck-up. Esposito was catching and with a fast runner on second he let a ball get through his legs. He definitely should have blocked it; it really wasn’t that hard a chance. As he jogged back to retrieve the ball the runner made an aggressive turn around third. Esposito fired to Navarro at third but mistimed the throw and gave Navarro a difficult throw to handle. The runner broke for home once he knew that the ball was coming back to third and made it easily. It was very, very ugly. Just for balance Corporan threw one into right field giving the Phillies a run. There were men on first and second and the runner on second stole third easily. This was with Figueroa pitching, and he paid no attention to the base runners at all. Corporan had the good idea of throwing to first but Wallace was tardy to the bag and the throw went wide. Free run.

Last thing – late in the game Q singled and took an unwisely aggressive turn himself. He beat the throw back to first but just barely. He slid awkwardly head-first back to the bag and lay there for some time in apparent pain. Great, I’m thinking, the team’s two starting catchers are out thanks to base running misadventures and we’re stuck with Moe Bandy.

Q got up finally. He was promptly advanced to second where he slid again, awkwardly, and the team immediately sent Bogusevic in to pinch run.

Chuck, Live from Kissimmee (3/1/2011)

Opening Day at Osceola

Today was a lovely day for baseball and a thin crowd dominated by Braves fans opened Osceola County Stadium for the spring. We watched our guys get slapped around by the Braves for the second day in a row in another game where the final score means dick.

Let me relay two observations from previous days that I’d neglected to mention. At the plate Towles’ hands look very, very slow. He didn’t always look this disjointed. In fact, I remember a couple of years ago when he looked like a star in the making here in Orlando. His swing just looked very different to me in the intra-squad game and I started to watch him carefully. I noticed that in his stance and through his swing he appears to roll his right foot outward and put all of his weight on the outer edge of his foot almost like he’s on snow skis and is making a sweeping turn to the right. I can’t imagine how he maintains balance like that, and I certainly don’t see how he can have any sort of consistent rhythm in his swing.

That reminds me – yesterday Hunter was taking his first at bat and unadvisedly swung wildly at a pitch that was going to hit him. I know I’m straining credulity here, please bear with me for a moment. Hunter sort of leapt out of the way as he swung and somehow managed to foul the pitch off. Everyone on the Astros bench was laughing and Carlos, the batter on deck, looked over at the bench with a broad smile and shouted at his new hitting coach, Mike! Teach me how to do that!

The other thing I forgot to mention was during the intra-squad game Brett Myers (who looked great today, more on that in a moment) commandeered a spot on Clark’s bench and basically raised hell throughout the entire six inning game. It was playful – shouting at the umpires, yelling words of encouragement and derision at the pitchers and hitters, he’d pop up and position himself at the entrance of the dugout like any good Little League coach and pretend to give signs to the catcher pitch by pitch. The highlight came in the fourth or so when Myers, in the middle of the inning, ran out onto the field and accosted catcher Brian Esposito (who looks really strong behind the plate) with a baseball card, mockingly beseeching him for a signature. It was brilliant. Myers dashed out of the dugout and in three strides was beside Esposito, waving the card in his mask-obscured face. Before Esposito could complete the question, Dude, what the fu- Myers with perfect timing had turned around and was back in the dugout.

Myers looked very much in control today. If he starts here and builds, getting better steadily, he’ll at the very least replicate last year’s surprising performance. He threw strikes, he seemed to hit his spots, he looked very, very good for early spring.

Every pitcher looked pretty good, actually, with the exception of my man Urckfitz. He got hit pretty hard, mainly because he was not keeping the ball down at all. I’m excited about Rowland-Smith. He has a very nice breaking ball and decent velocity. If Arnsberg works some magic we may see a pretty good pitcher emerge.

After Heyward’s double he immediately and quite foolishly tried to steal third. Needless to say, Q threw his ass out.

Koby started and finished a nice 3-6-3 double play which is never routine with a right handed first baseman, especially one who’s not out there for his glove to begin with.

Bourgeois and Steele both made very nice diving catches charging in from center.

Sadly I’ll be absent from the next week’s slate of games but will be back in action on the 10th, just in time to host Mr and Miss Limey as they make a pilgrimage to Osceola for a long weekend of baseball, sun, and, if history is any guide, plentiful libations shared with Ty in Tampa.

Yes, it’s that time again. Goodbye void and hello baseball, Spring Training style.  And as usual, we don’t mess around here at SnS.  In keeping with our long-standing tradition of providing excellent, informative, and thought-provoking commentary here on the SnS front page, we’ve decided to bring back our man in the park for an encore edition of “Chuck, Live From Kissimmee.”

Chuck, Live from Kissimmee (pt. 1, 2/28/11)

For me the void ended on Sunday. I’d been in the Orlando area a couple of days by then and had seen a few workouts, but Sunday offered an intra-squad game and that seemed to me an appropriate marking of the beginning of spring and of the beginning of spring training.

The turnout on a very warm Sunday was incredibly light. The majority of the fans inside the complex seemed to be socially maladjusted autograph seekers. If you’ve ever been to spring training you know the type. Fuck me, maybe you ARE the type. If you have irreconcilable differences with basic social norms, break long periods of uneasy silence with machine gun bursts of random observations at an inappropriate volume, lug around enormous binders filled with baseball cards of every conceivable variety while two-strapping a large backpack surely filled with more of the same, wear free promotional caps and only free promotional caps, if your sandaled stride as you leg it across grass and asphalt in hysterical pursuit of the one minor leaguer you missed last year is remarkably reminiscent of Borat, then yes, you are the type. And I thank you for your lurking presence near the batting cages and the parking lot while I sat happily in the bleachers and watched the game in relative peace.

By the way, where the FUCK do you work?

For the second year in a row Koby Clemens brought his bat. Very few pitchers threw many offspeed or breaking pitches (with the strange exception of Douglas Arguello who threw all sorts of breaking balls) so it’s impossible to extrapolate what I’m seeing now but like last year I’m struck by the obvious fact that Clemens can hit. At the time I thought drafting him was purely a PR move (and it may have been), but he is plainly shaping up to be a major league hitter. His defense
though needs a lot of work. That’s a charitable way of saying he is terrible. He was hit two balls at first. He bobbled one and let the other pass right through the wickets. I’ve watched him in several workouts thus far as well and it doesn’t get any better there, either.  He works hard and doesn’t seem to let his errors eat at him, but he’ll need to improve dramatically to offer big league defense.

You’ll likely have read that Anderson Hernandez made a couple of very nice plays at third and Manzella also made an impressive play at third diving to stab a sharply hit ball up the line and springing up to fire out the runner easily. I got my first look at Jordan Lyles who looks very much like a pitcher out there and had no trouble getting through his inning 1-2-3.

After the game I wandered over to a field in the back and watched a group of high-level minor leaguers go through some fielding drills.  This was my second chance to watch Delino DeShields, Jr. Last year I read that the team was considering moving him in to second from the outfield. So far, I know not why. His hands are stony and his arm is inaccurate.  I mean, he’s 18 years old and since I’m a casual fan and not a professional scout I can’t project what I see today into what might be five years from now. I have no idea what Adam Everett looked like at 18, but I would have to guess that he looked a damn site better than DeShields does.

I’ll leave it at this – in every workout I’ve seen DeShields lines up in tandem with fellow second baseman Enrique Hernandez. Maybe you busriders know all about this Hernandez kid but I don’t. All I know is that he has great hands and shows a very accurate arm. I think he’s 20, not too much older than Delino. Hell, he’s almost old enough to drink. But watching the two side by side it’s obvious who’s the more advanced defensive player, by far.

I love watching the minor leaguers’ workouts. It’s amazing how fundamental many of the things they practice are – how to call for an infield popup for example. I really enjoyed a fast paced drill where the pitchers fielded balls and threw to various bases and into various situations as dictated by the coach in charge. Squeeze! or 1-5! Or 1-4-3! or In between! and the pitcher and the first baseman would both charge the ball and communicate who’d get it over to the second baseman. The fellow in charge of these drills by the way was Dave Borkowski. Again, the pace of these drills is incredibly fast; a new pitcher appears at the front of the line every few seconds to execute the play directed by Borkowski.

I also enjoyed watching the pitchers, catchers and infielders work on various bunting plays and a wheel play designed to pick off a runner on second base. An added bonus is I now know the current signs the catcher gives the infield for these plays.

This morning I attended the meet and greet the team hosts for the season ticket holders. It was about 120 elderly shut-ins, three or four of the hardcore autograph seekers and me. I tell you what, I have never heard so many people complaining about free Starbucks coffee. I guess Starbucks is too robust for the velcro-shoe set.

Wade and Mills came out and gave a bit of a pep talk. Good thing, too, because after a hearty fruit cup a lot of these folks were beginning to nod off. After they opened the floor to a Q&A one lady leapt up and declared that she had noticed an uptick in the paehshin of the club. Don’t you people from Michigan have your own team? I wondered.
Another codger stood up and braced himself against his walker as he demanded to know why the hell the team was planning to move to Disney after all the county had done for the team. No, this codger was not I, nor did I put him up to it. I did befriend him, though. I would guess he’s close to 70 and far more profane than I am. In our friendly chat he called me a prick, a bastard and cheerfully told me Fuck you!

Afterwards I watched the minor league guys do some infield drills and then take BP. Mixed in were some of the big league players who wouldn’t be making the trip to Disney, most interestingly Barmes and Hall. I didn’t see a whole lot of these two fielding but from what I did see they both look very good, very comfortable. They look like a tandem that’s been playing together for a while. And both of them showed considerable pop in BP. I’m fascinated to learn what the team does with the infield this year, who the back-ups are, whether Manzella makes the team. There’s no Geoff Blum, no guy who can play all the positions. I could see a guy like Jimmy Paredes having a shot.

On to Disney for the game. I hate that fucking stadium. I really do.  The bright spots were several, despite the final score. The Astros got lots of hits. Look at the box and you’ll see. Wallace, Lee, Steele, Pence ripped one, even Manzella had a couple of hits. Later in the game Paredes and Mier turned a tight double play. I was sitting directly behind Tal Smith and at the play he straightened up and clapped with excitement, the only time he displayed any emotion at all throughout the game. Castro effortlessly threw out some idiot who tried to advance to second on a ball that had bounced off of Castro’s chest.

All in all it was great to see our guys back out there again.