In Defense of Huff
(Previous thread was getting really wonky)
Before we completely write off Huff's ability to play RF, let's keep in mind a few things:
* Not a single one of the balls in question were routine. They could have been better played, but they were all tough plays
* The afternoon sun was brutal because of the start time
* He'll get used to balls from RHH slicing away from him with a little more time at the position
* He was beat up before yesterday's game even started
* An inordinate number of balls at the fringe of his range found him in this series..and no, the Dodgers weren't trying to dunk balls in front of him
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Goofus
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Excuses!
I would be much more comfortable if Huff was in LF or Belt in LF.
Adopted Giant: William VanLandingham
I'm on the Twitters
Ssory Doc
I think post game comments are always worse than next day comments. The worst thing about the misplays were really the failure of the pitchers to pitch around them. Zito didn’t really have to give up a homer to Kemp, and Runzler didn’t have to give up a bunch of hits to the next few hitters either. Carroll’s ball was a hit anyway that he misplayed into a triple, and I remember Cody Ross dropping a pretty routine flyball last year too that was way more costly. Bochy is just going to have to be quick with his defensive changes until Ross gets back, even to the extent of making defensive changes in a tie game.
Buster Posey: Let's enjoy him before he goes to the Yankees because he wants to win the World Series. Wait, what???
Any idea’s on what’s going to happen when Ross comes back?
Do we really bench Burrell for Ross? But we need Ross in RF. So do we send Belt back down after a successful debut? What are going to do?
Kickham where it hurts
I think there’s a very clean rotation to be had between Huff, Burrell, Ross, and Belt (and then Torres/Rowand on the side). Belt is going to get days off. When those happen, Huff plays 1B and Burrell plays LF. Ross is going to get days off. When those happen, Huff plays RF and Burrell plays LF. Huff is going to get days off. When those happen, Burrell plays LF. Torres is going to get days off. When those happen, Rowand plays.
Everyone will get more than enough playing time as long as Bochy keeps half an eye on it.
I have just now conceived of a world in which Barry Zito is Lestat. But who is Armand?
by howtheyscored on Apr 4, 2011 8:49 AM PDT up reply actions
If that rotation is spread evenly
It means each guy is sitting every 4th day. I’m not sure guys who think of themselves as everyday players think of that as “more than enough playing time”. After all, they’re not catchers.
Huff started 154 regular season games last year. I’m not sure he’d be thrilled with starting 121.
I guess it’ll be a good test to see if these guys are really “team first” as they all said last year, but it concerns me a little.
The thong is, it happened.
Even that is assuming that nobody gets hurt or sick, though. A short DL spell for any of those guys turns 120 games for another guy into 135 just like that.
I have just now conceived of a world in which Barry Zito is Lestat. But who is Armand?
by howtheyscored on Apr 4, 2011 10:16 AM PDT up reply actions
Check your math and get back to me.
Kickham where it hurts
by say hey nation on Apr 4, 2011 10:23 AM PDT up reply actions
It took me a surprisingly long time to figure out what was wrong there.
Anyway, I still don’t think it’s a bad problem to have. It’s not an ideal rotation for a guy who wants to play 155 games, maybe. But I’d rather have enough bodies to cover the field and an injury, even if that means guys have to sacrifice time, than simply enough bodies to just cover the field.
I have just now conceived of a world in which Barry Zito is Lestat. But who is Armand?
by howtheyscored on Apr 4, 2011 10:31 AM PDT up reply actions
I agree it's a good problem to have for the team
I’m just talking about it from a player’s perspective.
PTB seems the most likely candidate to lose big playing time. I’d say the whole off-season pointed to that, so it shouldn’t shock him if he sees more time on the pine.
The thong is, it happened.
I agree. I’ll just have a hard time sitting PTB if he continues hitting.
Kickham where it hurts
by say hey nation on Apr 4, 2011 10:52 AM PDT up reply actions
He really isn't a rightfielder
I mean, if they play him there I am okay with it. It wouldn’t be my choice, but it isn’t the worst thing in the world.
To be honest, Goofus, I sense a whole pile of rationalization in your post. But I dig the way you can stay calm while everyone else is posting with their hair on fire.
The main thing I took from this series is the appearance of a better offense.
Dearest, Susan - The Patron Saint of Patience
by Lars The Wanderer on Apr 4, 2011 7:49 AM PDT reply actions
"Rationalization"
Hey, he’s my adopted Giant; it’s my duty to defend his honor!
If rationalization means to call for rational thinking, then I’m guilty. Huff clearly stuggled out there and I’m not looking past that or making excuses. My point was that it’s not a case of the sky falling and that it’s VERY unlikely that we’ll see that much trouble going forward, if for no other reason that it’s unlikely he’ll see that many balls hit just out of his reach in such a short span of time.
In the whole series, I think I can recall one routine fly and maybe two routine grounders. Everything else hit his way were pretty tough plays; he was either forced to run way in, sprint to cut off balls headed to the walls, or chasing that one deep fly to the wall.
There were a couple short bloops in front of hm in the first game that perhaps he felt he should have tried for. That might have made him more aggressive on subsequent short fly balls and against his better judgement.
Also, I beleive him about losing the Carroll’s ball in the sun. He had two very similar balls the day before and the results were much better; he trapped one and caught the other.
The thong is, it happened.
You’re such a bastard to your mods.
Adopted Giant: William VanLandingham
I'm on the Twitters
Ssory Doc
I'm just glad thankful his daughter is out of diapers
The “doody duty” was extra humiliating.
The thong is, it happened.
You can’t blame Huff for this situation. Giving Huff a day off yesterday, with Barry FlyBall Zito pitching, might have been a nice idea. Moving Huff to LF and removing Burrell, after the top of the 7th, definitely would have been the expected thing to do. Bochy did neither. So the blame falls to the manager on this one.
When Ross gets back, Huff goes to LF and Burrell becomes the super pinchhitter and occasional starter.
The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day. ~Gabe Paul
With Burrell's many K's and a bit of outfield trouble
I’m surprised Bochy didn’t throw Rowand (who had a good game the day prior) or Schierholtz out there yesterday…which would’ve shifted Huff from RF to LF.
Still, I’m okay with Huff in right…it’s not like his play lost the game, per se…the Giants need to score more than 3 runs, anyway.
He’s not as bad as he looked yesterday, but he’s not good either. When Ross comes back I’d say put him in LF and have Burrell off the bench. Start Burrell against lefties, Huff against righties or give Belt a day off against lefties and put Huff at first.
I’d like to think that a few if not all of the balls he had problems with would have been caught by Ross, or Scherholtz or Rowand as a defensive replacement. I think both of the two will get quite a bit of defensive work.
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The Dodgers really did have an astonishing amount of dinks and dunks in that series to go along with the defensive butchery, and Huff had some sort of black hole magnetism to get balls just within his not quite reachable range. I’ll chalk it up to bad luck. But, yeah Ross in RF makes sense. Until then, I wouldn’t be surprised or displeased to see some of Rowand and DeRosa in RF with Burrell moved to PH duty.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
I heard somewhere, maybe Marty Lurie
That Derosa doesn’t want to play OF. Something about he’s gotten bigger and lost some of his footspeed. If that’s true, he’d probably be no better than Huff.
As for Rowand, he’s probably saying, “Now all you a-holes see why I didn’t want to play corner OF!”
The thong is, it happened.
I’m pretty sure I heard that about DeRosa too.
The Basil Fawlty Moderating Strategy:
"We could run a nice blog here if we didn't have all these members getting in the way."
Go Roger Kieschnick! #4 Giants Prospect for 2010. (#18 for 2011) And son, please continue to break scoreboards on your way to San Francisco.
I don’t blame Huff at all. I’d bet he lost some sleep last night over those plays, and he’s been asked so much of by Bochy. He’s giving his all out there, and those were some nasty plays to try to make. He’s got the right approach and right attitude.
My biggest beef is Tejada and how he made Sandoval look as disciplined as a monk at the plate. That’s what I’m frustrated by the most.
I came, I saw, I told bad jokes and left.
eh
by any objective measure he’s been more disciplined than Pablo (which is kind of damning with faint praise)
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Or something.
That metaphor got away from me.
I think looking at that particular situation objectively...
…Tejada swinging at anything other than a belt-high FB is simply egregious and worse than any single thing Panda has done this year. An argument could be made that he should have been up there taking a strike, but instead he went after a ball at his ankles.
As I said on the game thread, it’s like he wasn’t even watching the previous ABs.
The thong is, it happened.
I'm in glorious agreement
That was the worst at-bat of the year so far. “This guy is having serious control issues, so I’ll swing at the first pitch.” Getting an out is one thing, and perfectly fine…getting out in that fashion was just headache-inducing.
by DanielSmith on Apr 4, 2011 11:43 AM PDT up reply actions 1 recs
If someone gets rec'd for being "in glorious agreement" with me
…can I count that as a rec for me too?
The thong is, it happened.
That's indefensible
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by Johnny Disaster on Apr 4, 2011 5:14 PM PDT up reply actions
It’s so much more frustrating when the problem isn’t just that he failed because of a physical constraint. It was just so damn stupid to swing at any pitch there.
by kingofthacove on Apr 4, 2011 12:57 PM PDT up reply actions
Yeah
In that situation, you don’t swing until you’ve got two strikes on you. Guerrier just couldn’t find the strike zone, no reason to help him out.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
I meant to say Kuo
/insert “all look alike” comment
Wow I could have sworn Guerrier pitched before Kuo. Getting old sucks.
The thong is, it happened.
Maybe in the long run that will prove to be true
But in that specific AB one would think that he should at least make the pitcher show he has some modicum of control before going into Happy Gilmore mode.
Now, if he’d actually gotten a hit with that, I’m sure all would be forgiven; very few would be saying “why not wait for a pitch in the zone?”
But obviously that’s not the case.
I came, I saw, I told bad jokes and left.
I think more that he thought wrong
I’d bet a small amount of money Tejada probably assumed the guy was going to groove him a fastball just to get in the strikezone. In another situation, maybe with the bases empty, hey, hack away. But in that situation, it was insipid and depressing.
The only problem I see with that is if he’s expecting one grooved in the zone, shouldn’t he keep his bat in the zone? I wish he had; it would’ve only been strike 1…
I came, I saw, I told bad jokes and left.
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Step 1. See ball, Step 2. Hit ball, Step 3. ?
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This line,
I’m in it.
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The difference between the 2010 playoff Giants (near-perfect defense and more than a little bit of luck) and the first series in 2011 Giants (flawed defense, death by bloop Dodgers hits) is glaring, but that’s baseball. Some times things go your way, sometimes they don’t. I’m glad things went the Giants’ way last fall, since TGWTWS.
I expect both the defense and the bullpen will improve once Wilson and Ross come back, so it’s just a matter of holding down the fort until then.
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Huff is a bad right fielder.
You don’t have to “defend” him. He is bad on defense. But as long as he hits well enough to compensate, whatever.
Gigante. Campeón. Andrés Torres.
Dursh nerf darsh narf. Poop.
He managed to be competent out there last year
So I’m not going to call him bad, yet. He had a bad series, sure, and he’ll never be good — I’ll go with “mediocre” for now.
This is a semantic argument
If you’re asserting that “mediocre” means “average”, I believe you are incorrect.
Gigante. Campeón. Andrés Torres.
Dursh nerf darsh narf. Poop.
I would think he’s closer to average for a LF than for a RF. The difference in the average between those two positions is pretty appreciable. Huff’s career UZR in RF is pretty bad, and most of that was accrued when he was younger, and I’d guess, faster than he is now.
MY DAD WAS WRONG!
MY BOY NEEDS TO THROW HARDER!
playing left and right are not really the same.
he was plenty passable in LF last season. Christ, a 59 year old bonds was able to deal
Most statisticians value them identically
Tango, fangraphs, B-R…
Gigante. Campeón. Andrés Torres.
Dursh nerf darsh narf. Poop.
Sullivan concurs
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The difference between Raul Ibanez and Aubrey Huff is that Aubrey Huff is a first baseman
by Lies and Perfidy on Apr 4, 2011 12:08 PM PDT reply actions
This
Huff played a solid RF last year when he was there, and I assume that when Cody comes off the DL, Huff will be spending more time in LF than RF.
defense wins championships
huff is a 34 year old first basemen, not an outfielder, soon to be a DH
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Isn't that football?
I thought it was genrally accpeted that pitching and offense in baseball are more critical than defense.
The thong is, it happened.
Yeah, Huff would be fine in Cover 2, but that man-to-man that Bochy insists on is killing him.
The great thing about baseball is that there's a crisis every day. ~Gabe Paul
you mean the Padres offense?
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Nickel or dime packages?
Why are you talking about Timmy?
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
I think this is for two reasons: first, defense doesn’t have a clear impact on the game. Since you can’t “prove” that a defensively-challenged outfielder wouldn’t have caught the fly ball that defensively-gifted outfielder caught, or vice versa, it’s really hard to say a player is saving or losing runs. And since the statistical perspective is really not yet able to accurately and quickly evaluate defensive performance, you can’t evaluate defense from that perspective either. Plus, there are situations where a misplay just doesn’t matter; if a fielder drops the ball with two outs and no one on, allowing a baserunner, then the next guy makes an out, who cares? Sometimes defensive ineptitude is just irrelevant.
Seth Rosin can hit the side of a barn with a baseball. From space.
Giants baseball: We're stupid enough to WIN that (TM)
I think also
That if you take any player in any game, the odds of him getting a chance at a “marginal” play, one would separate the definsively giften from the defensively challenged, is pretty slim.
On the other hand, every pitcher-hitter confrntation potentially separates the haves form the have nots.
The thong is, it happened.
Kuip on KNBR this morning
Said Huff was very open about his defensive limitations. According to Kuip, he said “I’ll make the routine plays, but I’m not a guy who’s going to make every really tough play.”
That seems like a fair assessement of himself. He had four pretty tough plays and didn’t get to two of them.
The thong is, it happened.
What he needs to do is identify which plays he can’t make and then pull up short so he can knock the ball down. Letting it rattle around the outfield is bad juju.
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Adopted 'nephew' to the ever avuncular and always awesome Jon Miller
by Johnny Disaster on Apr 5, 2011 11:34 AM PDT up reply actions
Yup
It looked like he was hainvg troubles identifying balls slicing away from him off RH bats. I’m not sure if that was because he’s not used to being out there or the sun made it difficult, but hopefully that gets better.
The thong is, it happened.
the problem is that if he had that much trouble playing RF in LA, he is going to have a really hard time at ATT or in SD or Col.
We'll see. I contend that overall, he's not going to hurt the team in RF
He’s clearly better a 1B or LF, but RF is the price you pay if you want Belt/Burrell/Huff in the same lineup.
The thong is, it happened.
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