Varitek Venom

[Ortees24]

You have to play Varitek in this situation, even though he may not be the best knuckle ball catcher. If Francona decides on Mirabelli, I'm saying there's gonna be BLOWS between Jason and the coach. Variteks .275 BA & .525 SLG% in the playoffs, is enough reason to keep him in.

 

How bought my bot Ortiz with a .810 SLG % Damn Brotha!

[yankthis]

Not criticism for Varitek, but we've already seen that he has much difficulty handling Wakefield's pitching. Gave new meaning to the phrase "balls to the wall".

 

Mirabelli can hit the ball just fine.

 

Even if he was to wiff 6 times in 6 at-bats, the benefit that the Cardinals may derive from several "balls to the wall" with men on base far outweighs the potential liability of one Red Sox player *maybe* striking out a few times. And that is a *maybe*; he may very well deliver a few big hits. There isn't much of a *maybe* about whether some balls would get away with Varitek behind the plate.

[elsrbueno]

Originally posted by yankthis@Oct 22 2004, 02:27 PM

Not criticism for Varitek, but we've already seen that he has much difficulty handling Wakefield's pitching. Gave new meaning to the phrase "balls to the wall".

 

Mirabelli can hit the ball just fine.

 

Even if he was to wiff 6 times in 6 at-bats, the benefit that the Cardinals may derive from several "balls to the wall" with men on base far outweighs the potential liability of one Red Sox player *maybe* striking out a few times. And that is a *maybe*; he may very well deliver a few big hits. There isn't much of a *maybe* about whether some balls would get away with Varitek behind the plate.

I've got no problems playing Mirabelli in game 1.

 

I love Tek but we've got to stick with what got us to the playoffs, and that's Mirabelli catching Wakefield.

 

Mirabelli had 9 HRs and a .525 slugging percentage this year. That's better than Varitek's!

 

I'm not saying he's better than Jason, but he's the best backup catcher in the bigs.

 

We saw what happened when Varitek caught Mirabelli in game 5. We're lucky it didn't cost us the game.

 

Dougie's gotta catch Wake tomorrow night.

[Beaneater]

I'm too lazy to actually do this, but I bet that if you extrapolate Belli's stats out as if he were a full-time player, his numbers would be pretty similar to Tek's. Just as an example, 9 HRs while playing every 5th game means that he'd [hypothetically] have 40-ish dongs for a full season. That's, um, a lot.

 

Of course, this doesn't mean that he'd actually have 40 HRs if he were the full-time catcher, but it does seem to indicate that we don't lose a whole lot of pop when Belli is in the game. I say absolutely put him in for Game 1. Absolutely.