Wow. Buster Posey just got zooged by Jason Heyward. No doubt about it, the replay confirmed what was obvious from Buster's body language--Heyward juked under the tag and was safe. Nice piece of baserunning. This is what the new rule about collisions should do, it should make the athleticism of the runner come into play. If you can, like Heyward, dodge an "easy out" tag play then more power to you. Plays at the plate should be about timing and skill, not brawn. Giants look overmatched against Minor tonight. Too bad, Vogie was throwing well. Maybe they can pull off a late-inning miracle.
--M.C.
6 comments:
But look again at the play and you will see that Heyward was on the grass, more than three feet out of the baseline, when he ducked to avoid the tag. That is illegal. I can't believe the announcers didn't mention it or that the replay officials in New York didn't see it.
The runner "makes his own baseline." I didn't see it that way. He rounded third and took a lane to the plate and then ducked under the tag.
You may be right. But how wide a turn is a guy allowed to take? I'm not saying Heyward did it intentionally, but his approach did help him avoid the tag.
Heyward was asked about the play and the new rules (from AJC story, link in Baggs' twitter feed):
"I think a lot of stuff would have been different. Not sure, I don’t know if he would have walked toward me the way he did. It was just weird. I knew immediately that I couldn’t hit him, and I was kind of shocked that he walked toward me, but he was doing what he felt he needed to do. The only thing I had going for me was that he didn’t know how I was going to react there. Again, it just worked out in our favor. Everyone was cautious there, but the thing is, no one got hurt….
“If he would have just stood there and just catch the ball and wait on me to get there, it would have been a lot harder to make any type of move, but he came at me and there was a little wiggle room.”
The guy who had the biggest impact on games I ever watched was, of course, Barry Bonds. Managers went bat-shit crazy trying to deal with him. All those intentional walks!
But the guy the Giants have now--Buster Posey--certainly has made his impact on the game. Not just the ROY, MVP and two rings, but the "Posey Rule." His injury was a sort of "final straw" in the debate about home plate collisions. He was the biggest star to have suffered injury from that now-outlawed play, and his manager, himself a catcher, was outspoken and obviously influential with the MLB powers-that-be. I'm willing to bet Boch was the one to get Joe Torre on board with the new rules.
It's great to be Giants fan!
Wow, amazing slide! Reminded me of a couple of beauts that Pablo pulled off early in his career! (Panda's were better, I think)
I was with Anon, looking at the replay and seeing his feet hit grass, but you are right, the runner can go out of the basepath as part of his momentum rounding 3B, else there is no way guys can score from 2B on a base hit.
Heyward deked him and Posey lost in that exchange, looking very awkward in the process. In this case, he would have had to dive into Heyward to get the tag.
Ultimately, I think fans are forgetting about 2011 and how fortunate we are to have Posey still around leading our team. As it was, that one run didn't matter, the winning run had already scored, and we don't know that Vogie wouldn't have given up those hits afterward.
I prefer Posey take the safe route here and going forward, for every run he might cost us at home, he probably is responsible for 10-20 runs scored for us. Heck, just defensively, he's probably responsible for saving 2+ runs for every run he gives up at home like this.
You take the good with the bad, suck it up, we are leading the division because he's been our hitting star most of this season.
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