A baseball question for everyone.

[seabeachfred]

Piazza had very good hands and he was a good receiver. He had lots of throwing problems.

 

Thanks for that observation 70 because that's exactly how I remember Piazza in the games I saw him play out here before he was traded away. The pitchers enjoyed pitching to him and they had no complaints that I ever heard in the rumor mill. Throwing was a problem but he loved to catch and worked the best he could at it. Now we come to Lavarnway. They will have to find a place for this guy because he is most likely to become a solid RH power hitter for the Red Sox. He, like Piazza, is learning this position but unlike Mike we know he can throw and that he has a strong throwing arm. The rest will come with experience as it should with Satalamacchia. If he regresses next season the boo birds will be out in force to tell everyone "we told you so", but let's give him a chance to develop further. Getting back to Ryan, the sooner he gets in the Red Sox lineup the better it will be for the team because they were too lefthanded this past season and playing half their games at Fenway Park that is trying to beat cancer with a cough drop.

[T_Bone]

are you not the same clown from the dodger boards?

[Dojji]

Who cares who he is somewhere else. that's a decent take and fairly well thought out.

[Dojji]

 

Keep in mind, he finished MIDDLE of the pack in a year when offensive catching numbers were down. Throw in the fact hes not all that food defensively, and.......what argument do you have?

 

That the middle of the pack was a whole HELL of a lot better than what we thought we'd get out of the catcher's position at the start of the year. Heck it was what we were HOPING to get. If Salty had been an unmixed blessing this year, that would have frankly been incredible fortune.

 

The fact that he was somewhat above that at the middle of the season and then fell back changes nothing. Salty progressed this year, both offensively and especially defensively, and is a creditable average catcher with a mix of skills and weaknesses. Considering where he was at the start of the year, that's pretty significant. Let's not forget that we picked this guy up virtually off the scrap heap.

 

I wouldn't call him defensively weak. He has strengthes and weaknesses behind the plate. Salty had a good year throwing out baserunners. He keeps throwing out baserunners at a 30% clip, teams are going to start respecting that arm more. And remember- -- Salty was the guy who handled Wakefield this year, that affects both how often players run on him, and his passed ball numbers, which led the league. And as a pitchcaller, well, he isn't Tek, but nobody's Tek. Salty's alright there.

 

According to WAR you're getting average production on both sides of the ball -- a little better than with the bat, a little worse than with the glove -- but remember that WAR doesn't cover the Wakefield Effect. Since we probably will not bring Wake back next year, I'd expect Salty's numbers to improve across the board defensively regardless.

[ORS]

The whole point with this thread was to make a point by posting a pretty simplistic s***** set of statistics. The statistics were not Saltys to a T' date=' but they were in his range......and that range was pretty brutal. The point was to hopefully show that many fans were blinded by his little hot streak. He was pretty good for a short period of time in the season, but in the end, the overall numbers were bad. [b']The point was to objectively look at his season totals.[/b]

 

Instead, another point was proven. No matter how bad overall the player performed and how terrible the stats were in the end, Sox fans are blind to the reality (by a little hot streak) and take offense to someone criticizing a backup catcher.

 

Surprised some of you didn't defend the beer drinking/chicken eating...."Yeah, but its not like they were drinking regular Budweisers, they were drinking Bud Light!!!"....."Yeah, but its not like they were eating KFC extra crispy, they were eating the original recipe!!!"

No, it wasn't, not the way you put it out there. An objective look would have included his position, age, salary, and it would have left some room for discussion of reasonable expectations moving forward. Instead, your "objective" look was through the lens of a 12-year old's eye.....don't take this as a stab at you individually, I'm not calling you 12, but most 12-year olds just look at the bottom line, the Triple Crown stats, and say "Good" or "Suck" and leave it at that. It was a simplistic look at a more complex issue.

[Dojji]

Not just reasonable expectations going forward either. you also have to consider what you expected at the start of the year. I was one of the more optimistic fans when it came to Saltalamacchia and my goals for him were incredibly modest. Given Salty's recent history, a .737 OPS and non-horrible defense was about as much as I was prepared to hope for (my preseason target was .750 OPS and he cane pretty danged close and he was nowhere near as bad defensively as I was afraid he'd be).

 

If he can gain greater consistency next year he could become quite the asset. If he plays at at least this level next year, he's a starting catcher -- if not here, somewhere.

 

Considering the level of expectations you had in Salty in April, SCM, you should be over the moon at this level of performance.