Re: Worst team in baseball?
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i haven't watched many mariners games not started by king felix, but the idea that their baserunning could possibly be worse than the cubs' strikes me as laughable. i wish mlb.com had searchable video for jones, alou and patterson getting thrown out on the bases in the past few years.
if a little league team got its baserunners thrown out on the bases all the time, i would blame the coaches for not teaching the players the fundamentals of baseball. just a thought.
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I haven't re-read my OP, but I think I qualified it by admitting extreme bias. I don't see many KC games and I knew that my post would generate a bunch of "KC is worse" replies, but it's frustrating to watch a bunch of guys who are being paid million$ play such thoughtless ball. Your little league analogy is right on the mark--that's what came to my mind too, but shouldn't these guys be a few steps above having to re-learn the basics? I expect that I'll be a little league coach within the next few years and one of the things I'll teach them is to have a plan when they step into the box--the Lopez squeeze play indicates to me that he isn't a thinking player. Ichiro has been absolutely awful on the basepaths. I have watched the M's 3rd base coach wave guys in that have no shot at being safe. The incompetence is maddening. I became aware that baseball is a thinking man's game when I was 15. I was playing in the city championship game and in the on-deck circle when my coach grabbed my arm and said "Swing over the first pitch as hard as you can, no matter how high the pitch is." It never crossed my mind to think about why he might want me to do it. Our pitcher, who was the slowest guy in the league was on first. He stole second and I came within a few inches of tearing the opposing catchers head off with my swing. I wouldn't copy this play at the youth level myself, but there was some bad blood between our teams and I can understand why he had no qualms with the play--they beat us 16-4 a few weeks earlier and were some of the sorest winners I've ever seen. We mercy-ruled them, 10-0, in the final and I went on to be best friends with one of their players in high school.
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