Monday, February 22, 2010

Reyes Third and Santos Out

It looks like Jerry is serious in having Jose Reyes bat third until Carlos Beltran returns from injury. Everyone is in an uproar over this. If Jose can't mentally handle batting third, then he should not be in the big leagues, plain and simple.

Does Reyes lead off an inning all the time? No. The leadoff batter in a lineup leads off the 1st inning, and in some cases, that's it. Think of the flip side to this. Half the time, Reyes will come up in the first inning with two out and no one on. If he reaches first base, you have a good situation to go for the stolen base- two out, bases empty. On the other hand if someone ahead of him reaches base, then he can actually drive them in with one of his league leading (and assuming he stays healthy in Citi it will be league leading) triples.

As for Omir Santos, yes, he provided us with some bright spots last season- well, I count only two. However, his constant swinging at the first pitch and on base percentage of below .300 will not be missed. Barajas is not much better, but at this point the more mediocre catchers there are competing for a spot the better.

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