You a Red Sox fan or something? You’re a little oversensitive about Manny’s “defense,” aren’t you?

Sure, and Mr. Adam Jones had an awful sixth inning in the outfield, too. Do you think the M’s could borrow that tape of circus music to play for him?

Manny Ramirez is going to the Hall of Fame, and very likely on the first ballot. Clown, indeed.

As dirk said, it was a slider, and I cannot imagine what scouting report the M’s had that said you should throw an offspeed pitch to Tek. All you had to do was watch Washburn K the guy on high hard stuff early in the game to know that was a good plan and that they should stick with it. Tek is a 34 year old catcher. His bat is slowing down.

Only time will truly tell. I’m no Bavasi fan, but he’s made some pretty decent trades. Now if only he can figure out who to sign during free agent season and we’d be good to go.

I missed the part where I sing Beltre’s hitting praises and laud his ability to live up to his contract.

Like I said, I defend what is defendable.

I think I project Beltre pretty realistically. I have bet that he will end the season at a .780 OPS or higher.

That is not good, but pretty remarkable after his start.

At the beginning of May, I believe we had this discussion and you pretty much thought April was what we were going to get and dismissed my suggestion that he would improve. SInce then he has.

So now we have a guy that has put up a .900 OPS for two months while playing outstanding defense at a key position.

And a guy that almost certainly would be putting up much better numbers than that if he wasn’t playing at SafeCo as it is currently designed. Witness his home/road splits.

Is that really worth the animosity? Really? When he’s outplaying Sexson who you seem to want to give a free pass?

So is MY position distorting reality or is it the position that wants to point to his failure in one at bat in a game where he drove in three runs, twice giving his team the lead?

“His ‘hit’ in the 8th that ‘would have been out of most parks’ should have been caught in _this_ park, so basically feeling good about him for a result that is someone else’s mistake . . . doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Another good example of the distorted lens… “should have been caught”?? It bounced off the top of the wall. Not giving him credit for that hit is beyond ridiculous. Should it have been a double? But caught? C’mon.

If you don’t want to credit him for that piece of hitting, Bela, it isn’t me that is dealing with a skewed perception.

I know Beltre’s flaws, I discuss them endlessly. I know how much he fails here… but you don’t know when he doesn’t.

Furthermore, a good part of what has made Putz so good this year is that his _location_ of the fastball has been, to me, much more consistent, and much better considered. He seems to be able now, as never before, to reliably throw the fastball on the outside corner to RH hitters; he regularly gets called strikes there to both RH and LFers. He also pretty consistently ‘challenges’ the hitter, especially really good, dangerous hitters, with the ‘rising fastball’ that ends up around the letters. Even if hitters swing at these pitches, they can’t get the head of the bat on the ball on a good swing plane, and they yield long but manageable flyball outs. Now, I was listening on the radio so I don’t know where JJ threw the fastball that Varitek took deep. If someone can tell me Jason did a Vladimiracle and hit a pulled a non-strike that hard, high and far, I will totally praise his name and line, and say that JJ had nothing to do with the outcome. But it’s got to be pretty much a certainty as far as guessing that a hit with that outcome was from a pitch in the fat part of the plate. That’s called ‘a mistake,’ and is of the kind the JJ makes if left to his own devices historically. I love the guy, don’t take it any other way, but it doesn’t make me blind to his pitching tendencies. And certainly smart, smart hitters like Jason Varitek pay close attention to those tendencies.

So I’ll put it in a nutshell on Adrian so you know what it is you don’t like when I post up: a) he doesn’t play at all smart, and fundamentally I don’t respect that. He plays HARD but he doesn’t play smart. That’s my perspective; no one has to share it, but it’s a perspective rooted in observed, factual behaviors. Over 40 years I’ve seen numerous gutsy, competitive, hypertalented athletes disappoint on their physical potential and their context’s need for them to meet rather than fail to meet that potential, and every time I watch Adrian with a bat in his hands or running the bases I see another one. I root for him totally when he’s wearing leather, if that makes you feel any better. b) Adrian is being paid to carry the team based on one season he had just before he came here. He can’t and wont carry the team, and I don’t see it as likely that he’ll ever repeat that year. One could blame management for that, or blame no one for that. As time goes on, I become more and more suspicious of that year. I’m sure that that will strike you as unfair, and in significant part it _is_ unfair. It’s how I feel. If he’d never had that year, and management had signed him to the same contract, I’d blame them, not him, so there’d be no b).

I’d rather have a smart player who was worth the dough who could carry the team, and every time Adrian goes out and has a three-predictable-bad-guess AB with critical runners on base I’m reminded of what I don’t like. His ‘hit’ in the 8th that ‘would have been out of most parks’ should have been caught in _this_ park, so basically feeling good about him for a result that is someone else’s mistake . . . doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Unless one wants to feel good about him, or make excuses for him, and since you do, by all means go right ahead.