Kuzul

The pressure of Major League Baseball’s stretch run has boiled the race for the National League Most Valuable Player award down to two realistic options. With all due respect to Andrew McCutchen, Yadier Molina and—if you want to get sabermetric-happy—David Wright, Buster Posey and Ryan Braun are the only horses in this race.

On one side, you have the cherubic golden boy who seems to embody the James Earl Jones version of America’s pastime. On the other, you have the disgraced-oh-wait-no-he’s-not-on-a-technicality defending 2011 NL MVP.

The latter’s surge is laying the national baseball media bare for all to see who care to look.

Although Posey seems to have the inside track at the moment, Braun has been charging hard at the San Francisco Giants’ catcher for the last couple of months.

A hot August gave way to a scalding September, and though the Brewers have fallen out of contention in the last week, that they even resurfaced in the discussion is a tribute to the feats of their premier slugger. This is a team that was 12 games under .500 on Aug. 19 and will now finish with at least 82 wins.

Braun has been mashing, no doubt about it.

To understand the hypocrisy of the groundswell behind Ryan, you have to understand how much more valuable Buster’s been.

If you look at the raw numbers, it’s a relatively close call.

The wins above replacement (WAR) is separated by tenths of a point, but Braun has Posey smoked in the counting stats and slugging percentage, while Gerald Dempsey Posey III has Ryan licked in batting average, on-base percentage, walks and strikeout rate. So Braun’s been more productive and Posey’s been more efficient.

But consider the context.

Posey calls AT&T Park home, while Braun wears his whites at Miller Park. If counting stats were a growing boy, AT&T would be cigarette smoke, while Miller would be milk and vegetables.

Then take a gander at the WAR leaderboard again.

You’ll see Braun is joined by teammates Aramis Ramirez, Corey Hart and Norichika Aoki in the top 40. Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Gomez actually have a better WAR than Hart and Aoki, but don’t have enough plate appearances to qualify. Either way, the Brew Crew has six position players with WAR of 3.0 or better.

For all the fuss made about the departure of Prince Fielder, Milwaukee’s cupboard isn’t exactly bare.

By comparison, San Francisco has three position players in the top 40 and one of those hasn’t played a game since mid-August.

Also consider that Posey has done his damage despite seeing the vast majority of his innings from behind the plate and after coming back from a hellacious injury, one that clearly demonstrated Buster’s import to the Giants as much of the same personnel that limped to the finish line in 2011 has been thriving in 2012.

In what has been a surprisingly strong offensive year for backstops, Posey’s been the best and he’s been no slouch on defense, either.

Finally, as good as Braun has been since the All-Star break, nobody in baseball has been hotter than the Giants’ catcher.

Posey leads all of baseball in batting average (hitting close to .400), on-base percentage, is second to Miguel Cabrera—who’s on his way to a Triple Crown—in slugging percentage and ranks in the Top Five for RBI. His inhuman play since the Midsummer Classic has propelled the Giants to a comfortable division title and the man, himself, to the cusp of an NL batting crown.

Either team suffers massively if its star disappears, but the Giants are a playoff team with Posey, whereas Milwaukee isn’t going to the postseason even with Braun. It’s obviously not the defending MVP’s fault, but that doesn’t change the value proposition: The difference in value between playoffs and no playoffs is tremendous, whereas the difference in value between X wins and Y wins is largely nominal when neither total would’ve qualified for the postseason.

Braun has a good argument on its face, but Posey’s is significantly better. Case closed.

Which brings us to the hypocrisy of the thing.

In a normal year, this MVP debate would be a typical one based on the merits of both players.

Of course, due to the aforementioned performance-enhanced scandal surrounding Braun and the game itself, this is not a normal year.

Instead, it’s been a banner one for sanctimonious hand-wringing and figurative crucifixion in the media.

When Melky Cabrera got popped for using in August, many in the press were so outraged you’d think these grown men had never been lied to before or heard of synthetic testosterone.

Meanwhile, the looming specter of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa becoming Hall of Fame eligible gave those with the holier-than-thou gene a chance to flaunt it when decrying any and each of the trio’s chances.

Part of the fiction that is the post-steroid era is the media’s overly dramatic and hard-line stance on anyone who gets caught up in the maelstrom. It’s like the press is trying to make up for all those years when only blind eyes saw the PED telltales and it doubled down on that effort in ’12.

For the record, I don’t care much about the use of performance-enhancers in professional baseball, but that’s a matter for a different day.

What does irritate me is that the same group that treats PED use like a communicable disease in most settings is going out of its way to French kiss it in this one.

Given the media’s general attitude toward those touched by the PED scandal and the nip-tuck nature of the two studs’ seasons, Braun shouldn’t be anywhere near the discussion. He should be noted and dismissed by those same voting members who find PED use so abhorrent in its other contexts.

Yeah, yeah, the Hall of Fame ballot instructs voters that character should be a consideration, while there is no such directive on the MVP ballot.

Equally compelling is the fact that Braun’s PED suspension was waived because the sample was stored too long.

Look, if you believe character matters, then it always matters, whether you’ve been explicitly told to consider it or not. It’s not like the MVP ballot demands that the voter ignore character.

As for the technical loophole Braun squeezed his MVP trophy through, does Ryan’s urine turn into testosterone and/or “prohibited substances” gradually over time? If so, is the medical community aware of this? Because I’m thinking there could be some beneficial applications of that little talent.

So why the special rules when it comes to Mr. Braun?

Who knows?

Maybe it’s because he’s the anti-Bonds: a likable otherworldly talent. Maybe it’s because the Braun-shouldn’t-win angle is too obvious and rational to ever start a firestorm. Maybe those members of the press sincerely believe the dude is innocent.

After all, somebody falls for those African prince emails, too, right?

I won’t speculate as to the why of it, but one thing is certain: All players are not created (or chemically enhanced) equally in the eyes of the national media.

The NL MVP race is proving it.

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After watching him help the Angels sweep the Red Sox earlier this week, and based on his entire body of work this season, it’s clear that Mike Trout is one of the most exciting young players in the majors. He may even be the American League MVP when all is said and done, but there is one thing I don’t think the 21-year-old phenom should be:

Rookie of the Year.

Technically, Trout is a rookie. As the MLB rules state, “A player shall be considered a rookie unless, during a previous season or seasons, he has (a) exceeded 130 at-bats or 50 innings pitched in the Major Leagues; or (b) accumulated more than 45 days on the active roster of a Major League club or clubs during the period of 25-player limit (excluding time in the military service and time on the disabled list).

Trout makes the cut…barely. He played in 40 games (32 starts) during 2011, in which he had 123 at-bats. This may qualify someone for rookie status the next year, but it seems like an awful big sample set for me.

Forty games is nearly a quarter of the MLB schedule, and in Trout’s case, these were not just meaningless down-the-stretch contests. His first appearance came on July 8 against Seattle, and he wound up playing 14 games in July, eight in August, and 19 in September as the Angels battled for both an AL West title and a Wild Card spot. They got neither, but Trout (who hit .220 with five home runs and 16 RBI) got plenty of experience.

This year, of course, has been a different story. Trout has been with the Angels since late April and has torn up the league with an AL-best .336 average, 41 stolen bases, and 103 runs scored (along with 25 home runs) entering last night. Much hoopla was made when he became the first rookie to have both 25 homers and 40 steals during the Red Sox series, but he just doesn’t feel like a first-year guy to me.

He was an everyday player for Los Angeles during a good stretch of LAST season, and while he may seem like an entirely different performer this year, Trout is in fact the same guy who had already seen plenty of big-league pitching entering 2012.

To me, a true Rookie of the Year (ROY) winner is a guy who debuts the year he captures the award, or at most plays in 10 or 15 September games the previous season.

Baseball is the only one of the four major professional sports that has this type of shady rookie status. Football players, of course, go straight from college onto NFL rosters and have zero pro experience entering their first year. Ditto for hockey players, who enter the NHL from college or the minor league ranks. And while basketball players may have overseas professional experience, the first NBA games for every Rookie of the Year are played during his initial season in the league.

My 11-year-old son Jason had a very perceptive comment when I mentioned this discrepancy to him. “If Mike Trout is able to do this, what will keep managers from making sure young players don’t break the 130 at-bat limit so they can get better and older?”

I found no proof of this with Trout, who Angels manager Mike Scioscia played all game, every game down the stretch of 2011. It would have been interesting to see what might have happened had Trout gotten six more at-bats, of course.

Jason also had another funny premise: if a guy came up from the minors for 10 games a year for three years, would he still be considered a rookie going into his fourth season? According to the MLB rules above, he would. This seemed too funny to be plausible, but it happened…the 2008 NL ROY, Cubs catcher Geovany Soto, had played with Chicago for one game in 2005, 11 games in 2006, and 18 games in 2007. A fourth-year rookie!

I first started thinking about Trout’s freshman/sophomore status when Will Middlebrooks was shining for the Red Sox earlier this summer. A broken wrist derailed Middlebrooks in mid-August, and even if he had played out the string the chances are slim he would have put together stats like Trout.

But since Middlebrooks was a TRUE rookie whose 75 major games, 15 homers, and 54 RBI all came this season, one could argue (outside Los Angeles) that he is a more worthy Rookie of the Year winner than the guy who will get the award.

For some additional perspective, I looked back at AL and NL ROY winners from the past 10 seasons to see how they compare with Trout in pre-ROY experience. Soto was the only one I found with three MLB seasons under his belt, but one other player (Angel Berroa in 2003) had played shortstop for the Royals for a combined 35 games and 128 at-bats in 2001-2002. Talk about cutting it close to the 130 at-bat limit!

Most of the others fell into the more reasonable range of 15-20 pre-ROY games and 50-75 at-bats for position players and 5-15 games for pitchers. Six of the 20 awardees were “true” Rookies of the Year who saw their first MLB experience in their winning year: Chris Coughlin, Andrew Bailey, Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, Dontrelle Willis and Eric Hinske. Honorable mentions go to 2006 winners Hanley Ramirez and Justin Verlander, who both played in just two MLB contests the previous season.

I think the system needs some revamping. Lower the pre-ROY maximum numbers to 20 games and/or 50 at-bats for position players, and 10 games and/or 30 innings for pitchers. This will ensure that September call-ups can still be considered rookies, but guys who played three months like Trout last year will be out of luck.

And what if Trout pulls off the double-win and captures both the Rookie of the Year and the MVP awards? He would be just the third man to achieve this feat, after Fred Lynn (in 1975) and Ichiro Suzuki (2001): two men who offer another contrast in rookies.

Lynn played in a reasonable 15 games in September of ’74, and while Suzuki was a “true” rookie in ’01 with regards to his MLB status, he did have nine seasons and more than 1,000 games in the Japanese professional leagues under his belt.

Now that’s another discussion altogether.  

Saul Wisnia lives less than seven miles from Fenway Park and works 300 yards from Yawkey Way. His latest book, Fenway Park: The Centennial, is available at http://amzn.to/qWjQRS, and his Fenway Reflections can be found athttp://saulwisnia.blogspot.com. He can be reached at saulwizz@gmail.com and @saulwizz. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Buster Posey has been a grinder for the San Francisco Giants this season, and a player who deserves the National League MVP Award.

Since he broke into the big leagues in 2010, where he batted .305/.357/.505 and ran away with the Rookie of the Year Award, Posey has been an instrumental part of the Giants lineup.

Not only does he call a great game, but he brings a youthful energy to the squad, an energy that’s hard to maintain.

Buster Posey is hands down the most important player on a Giants squad inches ahead in the N.L. West pennant race. 

Why? Because he’s their backbone.

Before the enthusiasm Bryce Harper and Mike Trout brought to the game, Posey showed the world he’s able to carry a World Series team on his back. 

His presence on the diamond is electric, so it’s not a shocker San Francisco missed the postseason last year after losing Posey 45 games into the season.

But alas, he’s back and better than ever, setting career highs in every major hitting category. And if he hasn’t already, he’s on pace to have the best season of his young career.

Thus far he’s batting a blistering .328/.394/.542 to go along with 17 homers, 23 doubles and 41 walks.

But above all, there are two statistics that stand out most about Posey: his 41 RAR and 4.2 WAR.

In simpler terms, the Giants are a better ball club with Posey in their lineup, from both an offensive and defensive standpoint.  

Although guys like Melky Cabrera and Andrew McCutchen will headline the MVP crew, don’t be surprised to hear Buster Posey’s name called, because he’s been climbing to the top of a lot of hitting categories.

And he hasn’t even played 100 games yet.  

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It is certainly a bit of a misnomer to use the term “underpaid” when discussing professional baseball players. With a new league minimum salary of $480,000, even the sixth outfielder and the lefty specialist make more annually than the President of the United States. Make no mistake—if you’re talented enough to catch the eye of a big league team, you have the chance to become better paid than the majority of Americans. The league minimum is nothing to sneeze at, but the league average is a tick above $3 million—a paycheck most of us would be hard-pressed to complain about. 

Of course, all players—and all player contracts—are not created equal. They are frequently based on past performance and hope to approximate future performance, an inexact science at best. It is not uncommon for aging players to perform significantly worse in the final years of their contracts than they did when they first signed it, and every now and then you get players whose numbers take drastic and unexplained dips soon after signing mega-deals.

These so-called “albatross contracts” haunt the dreams of every major league GM, who want nothing less than to sign the next Dan Uggla ($13 million, batting .210), Bobby Abreu ($9 million, recently designated for assignment by the Dodgers) or Vernon Wells ($21 million for a whopping -.4 WAR per Fangraphs).

But on the other end of the spectrum are players who are playing well above their pay grade. These are mainly younger players who have yet to become arbitration eligible, but have already started to contribute in big ways to their big league club. For some of these players, the right break for their team in the playoff race could mean a big boost in their MVP candidacy (as we have seen in recent years, MVP voters very much factor team success into the spirit of the award). 

We can quantify the extent to which a player outperforms their paycheck by calculating their cost vs. performance score—the average MLB salary divided by the player’s salary, multiplied by the player’s WAR. 

Read on to find out which legitimate MVP candidates are being paid less than Jack Wilson.

All salary figures are courtesy of Baseball Player Salaries, and all batting stats are courtesy of Fangraphs.

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The Giants open up a six-game road trip with a three-game series against the Atlanta Braves tonight, followed by a three-game series in Philadelphia over the weekend. 

The trip will mark the last time the Giants head to the East Coast this year, at least in the regular season. With Atlanta currently leading the wild-card race and 2.5 games back in the NL East, the matchup could be a preview of a postseason series in October. 

After getting pummeled in their last road trip to Washington and Pittsburgh, the Giants know they must come out and prove they can play well away from San Francisco. 

With some glaring issues that are often magnified on the road, the Giants will need to prove they can overcome these deficiencies if they are going to win the NL West.

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The San Francisco Giants enter play on Tuesday night with the second best record in the National League—sitting atop the National League West with a record of 45-35, 1.5 games ahead of the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.

It has been the pitching staff that has been largely responsible for the Giants’ excellent first half of the season. The offense remains below average, as it has been every season since 2004—the final MVP season from former star slugger Barry Bonds.

The Giants’ pitching staff ranks as the third best in baseball with a team ERA of 3.37. Their Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), which removes factors outside of the pitcher’s control such as team defense, is the second best in baseball. 

Offensively, the Giants are 23rd in runs scored, 21st in OPS, 25th in slugging, 29th in home runs and 24th in walks. The lack of power and impatience in the batter’s box has not been a recipe for offensive success.

On the bright side, the Giants don’t strike out a lot—they are the sixth best in baseball at avoiding the whiff. That high contact approach has led to a .262 team batting average (10th best in baseball) and a .320 on-base percentage, which is 15th.

The Giants also have improved their team speed with the acquisitions of Angel Pagan, Gregor Blanco and Melky Cabrera in the outfield. They rank third in baseball with 65 stolen bases.

Defensively, the Giants rank 21st in the FanGraphs metric Defensive Runs Saved, 15th in Ultimate Zone Rating and 27th in fielding percentage. However, in the Baseball Prospectus metric for defense (called Defensive Efficiency—which measures the percentage of balls put in play turned into outs by the defense), the Giants rank seventh with a conversion rate of 72 percent. 

In sum, the Giants have had great pitching, a high-contact offense with speed—but without a lot of patience or power —and a defense that converts a high percentage of balls put in play into outs, despite a lot of errors.

What about the sum of the parts? Let’s take a look at each of the 25 Giants players using the 2-8 grading scale that teams use. An eight is a Cy Young or MVP season, seven is an All-Star season, six is very good, five is average, four is below average, three is not very good and two is the Manny Burriss level of futility. (All of the stats in this article are courtesy of FanGraphs).

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Ryan Cook has been almost lights out for the A’s this season. Tonight was not one of those nights. The San Francisco Giants overcame a 3-1 deficit with four in the ninth to beat Oakland 5-4 and take the opener of the Bay Bridge series in Oakland. Cook took the loss, while Giants reliever Clay Hensley got credit for the win. Former A’s reliever Santiago Casilla allowed Josh Reddick’s 16th home run in the ninth, but picked up his 20th save.

A’s starter Jarrod Parker went six-plus innings, allowing only a single run on four hits and two walks while striking out four. Struggling Giants starter Tim Lincecum actually resembled his former dominant self after the first inning, going six innings and allowing three runs on only three hits. Lincecum struck out eight. But he did walk four batters, as his control remained elusive.

After Parker went 1-2-3 in the first, the A’s immediately struck against Lincecum. Coco Crisp led off with an infield single. He then promptly stole second and third base and scored on Jemile Weeks’ single to center field. Josh Reddick then snapped his 0-for-19 slump with a bloop single that landed just in front of Nate Schierholtz. A walk to Yoenis Cespedes loaded the bases.

Then Seth Smith hit a grounder to Giants first baseman Brandon Belt. 

Belt, instead of tagging first base for the force out, stepped over the bag and threw home, where Weeks slid home to beat the tag of backup catcher Hector Sanchez. Brandon Inge followed with a bases-loaded walk to force home the third run of the inning. To Lincecum’s credit, he stopped the bleeding, striking out Brandon Moss, Kurt Suzuki and Cliff Pennington in order to keep the score 3-0. 

The Giants scored their run in the top of the third when, after a leadoff single by Sanchez, Parker threw a wild pitch to advance him to second. Gregor Blanco then singled to right field for the RBI, making it 3-1.

But Parker would allow nothing else, and the bullpen effort of Jerry Blevins and Grant Balfour was splendid. Cook just could not shut the door. Belt’s two run double and RBI singles by Sanchez and Blanco put the victory in the Giants’ win column.

Good: Jarrod Parker. He definitely deserved to win. Unfortunately for him, it was one of those deals where the closer just didn’t have it. But Parker was solid. He threw six-plus innings and did enough to exit with a 3-1 lead. He kept the Giants guessing with his fastball and changeup and continues to impress at home.

Bad: A’s 7-8-9 hitters. You can’t completely scapegoat the bottom of the lineup, but they do deserve some criticism. It’s is not really the overall performance (1-for-10 with five strikeouts), but the lack of production in the first inning, when the A’s could have ended the game right away. With the bases loaded and no outs, Moss could not put the ball in play. Needing only a sacrifice fly, Suzuki could not put the ball in play. And the last chance to produce, Pennington, struck out meekly. The A’s gave the Giants an opening and they took it.

Ugly: Ryan Cook. It was bound to happen. Most closers have a bad appearance or two in the course of a season. Cook’s was definitely tonight. His control was off from the beginning and walks—a season-long issue—were his undoing tonight. In total, he was charged with four earned runs. That is double the two he had allowed entering the game. This was a disheartening loss for the A’s, who appeared well on their way to getting the opener against their Bay Area arch rivals. 

Looking to bounce back from this tough loss, the A’s will send Tyson Ross against Madison Bumgarner on Saturday, with first pitch scheduled for 4:15 p.m.

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Just in case you’ve hibernated for the past two years, let me update you on the Giants‘ pitching.

Jonathan Sanchez is no longer a Giant. Ryan Vogelsong has stepped in and pitched very well. Barry Zito is playing well. Brian Wilson has a beard, Sergio Romo does too, and Javier Lopez was traded to the Giants and he has played very well.

Oh, and there’s also this other guy named Madison Bumgarner, and he’s pretty good.

Bumgarner stepped in during June 2010, and he played well throughout the regular season. He was good enough to earn a starting spot in the playoffs, where he went 2-0 and pitched in four games (all won by the Giants).

In 2011, he was great, and in 2012, he’s played well too. Although he is only 6-4, his ERA is just above 3.00, and he has anchored San Francisco’s staff. With San Francisco’s offense improving, so should Bumgarner’s stats.

Bumgarner isn’t even in his prime yet, which is a scary thought for opposing hitters. He has great stuff, and he is developing into one of the game’s best pitchers. However, I think he’s already in that class.

Here are four reasons why Bumgarner is one of the MLB‘s best pitchers.

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Playing Rough

Something you hear a lot about from fans is the lack of an “old-school” mentality in the modern game of baseball.

While many of the proponents of the so-called “old-school” are too young to know anything about it, there is some truth to the idea that the game was more hard-nosed in days gone by. Whether this is a good or bad thing is open to debate (that’s what we’re here for, after all). With injury concerns and millions of dollars at stake, with careers and long-term health on the line, we have seen less and less of the violent action that, in our sepia-toned memories, once punctuated the game with much greater frequency.

Collisions at Home Plate

Recently, the focal point of these debates has been collisions at home plate.

Talented young catcher Buster Posey broke his leg blocking the plate and missed all but a few weeks of the 2011 season after a Rookie-of-the-Year season in 2010. Perhaps more famously, in the 1970 All-Star game, Pete Rose ran over catcher Ray Fosse, causing Fosse to suffer a separated shoulder, which many fans attribute to the decline of Fosse’s career. In fairness, Fosse played 42 more games that season and hit .297, and the collision with Rose was just one of many injuries Fosse suffered through the years.

The question here is was it worth it?

Fosse has been quoted many times saying it’s “part of the game”, and Rose maintains he was just trying to win. The problem here is that this was an exhibition game, with nothing on the line. In general, the catcher can possibly try for a sweep tag or even attempt to catch the runner further up the line. The runner isn’t always forced to hit the catcher; he can opt instead to slide around him or go for the plate with his hands.

While I don’t believe collisions are a thing of the past, I do think players on either side will be less likely to hit each other going forward because of the possibility of injury. Nobody will tell them explicitly not to do it, but the unwritten rules of baseball are legion.

My view: sometimes the team needs that run, or needs to prevent that run, more than anything. If it is going to give them the best chance at the result they want, then a collision is going to happen. These decisions are made in split seconds. So unless it’s unnecessarily aggressive, then it’s just part of the game.

Charging the Mound

Here’s something you rarely see, and likely with good reason.

While a pitcher can easily enrage a batter by hitting him or brushing him back one time too many, it’s probably not a great idea to rush at him from the batter’s box. If the batter is holding onto the bat and threatens the pitcher, he is looking at a suspension or even the possibility of criminal charges.

If the batter is a little bit smarter than that and drops the bat first, he just made the mistake of approaching a guy standing on raised ground who is, in all likelihood, quite a large man. Pitchers are big, often bigger than many sluggers. They have eight other guys on the field ready to back them up, including one wearing protective gear located right behind the batter.

Still, this is such a rarity that I only included it in this article so I could show the picture of Nolan Ryan beating up Robin Ventura. Ryan, already an old man and not long from retirement, famously got the upper hand when a young Robin Ventura came steaming towards the mount. Ryan was ready for him, and he grabbed Ventura in a headlock (a side headlock for you wrestling fans) and pounded his fist into his head until other players intervened. Do a Google Image Search for Robin Ventura, and you will see this in the first five pictures.

My view: if you’re stupid enough to do it, then go ahead. Fun for everybody!

Playing Dirty

There are countless examples or ‘dirty’ plays in every major sport that are nevertheless a part of the game. Then there are some things that just don’t jive well with most fans or players. I think the two most extreme examples of these types of behaviors are throwing at a batter and spiking the baseman.

Firstly, spiking the baseman.

You’re going from first to second on a sharp grounder off the bat of your teammate, and you see the second baseman running to cover the bag. The game is tied with one out in the seventh and the pitcher is tiring; you need to break up this double play. So you slide right at the second baseman, hoping to cause him to throw wide.

Breaking up the double play is always the right choice, but the line is drawn when you decide to stick your front foot up a bit and aim for the legs.

This is a dangerous and mean-spirited play and if obvious enough would result in an ejection. This wasn’t always the case, though.Ty Cobb, one of the greatest of his time – all-time leader in batting average, second all-time in hits, and all-time leader in being a psychotic bastard – was infamous for sharpening his spikes and aiming them at the defenders’ vulnerable legs. Cobb, being the demon in human form that he was, did this even on the most routine plays. While this was met with scorn and criticism even in his day, in Cobb’s mind every play was the most important one of the game.

Throwing at a batter; this is what prompted this whole article.

More specifically, Cole Hamels hitting Bryce Harper is what prompted this article.

Pitchers have hit batters for over a hundred years, and they’ll keep on doing it. While it’s dangerous and often a prelude to run-scoring retribution, I can’t say it doesn’t have its place in the game. It’s the situation it takes place in that makes all the difference.

Hall of Famer Don Drysdale was infamous for hitting batters, and quite hated for it, but it was a part of his strategy (which he put down to not wanting to waste four pitches on an intentional walk when he could throw one and plunk him).

On the flip side, you have the recent plunking of super-prospect and media magnet Bryce Harper by popular-only-in-Philadelphia Cole Hamels, who claims he hit Harper to “teach him a lesson”. While most pitchers will agree that sometimes throwing at a guy is acceptable, this is an example where it’s just a scummy thing to do.

Nowadays hitting a batter is taken pretty seriously by umpires, and hitting a guy who had never faced him before in the first inning of a scoreless game is a stupid move for a pitcher. Since it was both unprovoked and obviously on purpose, Hamels could have easily been ejected.

Where would that leave his team?

Now you’re asking another starter to pitch on the wrong day. Or you’re asking the bullpen, which hadn’t even begun to think about warming up, to patch together nine innings and screw up the next few games because all your relievers’ arms are tired.

For that matter, what lesson was Hamels teaching Harper, except one about Hamels’ obvious jealousy of Harper’s new-found fame?

Being a rookie isn’t a punishable offense, nor should it be (although Harper got the last laugh, stealing home on a pickoff attempt after Hamels put him on base by hitting him). One further point on Hamels and Harper; Bryce Harper is a National League pitcher, and one thing that is rarely tolerated in baseball is unprovoked throwing at a pitcher. Pitchers don’t throw at each other sometimes out of respect, but generally because it’s considered a high crime in the baseball world to do it. So when Cole Hamels was a rookie in Philly, who threw at him?

My view: Situational. Pitchers shouldn’t throw at a guy for nothing, or because they can’t get a guy out, or any other cowardly, selfish reason. However, there are times it’s justified. I cheered when Shaun Estes threw at Roger Clemens (although he didn’t hit him). I crossed my fingers during his every at-bat that Barry Bonds would take one in the head. Even though this isn’t something that should be common, in retaliation for an unjust plunking or as part of a rough game between rival teams, it has its place. That will never change.

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The Giants have discussed permanently moving slugger Buster Posey from catcher to first base, according to MLB.com’s Chris Haft. That day may not be too far away. 

Buster wants to catch, and he’s superb at the job. He calls a great game, no one denies that. He paints a nice target, and he has a certain stillness and finesse that only the very best in the game possess. He handles the pitching staff like a true veteran, and he even gets along well with the umpires. He likes being behind the dish.

His numbers look much more impressive for a catcher then they do for a first baseman, although he seems to be putting up pretty impressive numbers for any position lately. (.353/.413/.603)  Buster may improve offensively if he doesn’t have the daily grind of squatting behind home plate. Catching takes a mighty toll on everyone who does the job, and he might simply be too valuable a player to leave him there.

Hector Sanchez has progressed in the catching slot much faster then anyone anticipated, and having both Posey’s and Sanchez’s bats in the lineup is a plus. Sanchez is still having trouble in some minor areas, but nothing that can’t be fixed in the next month or so.  

There has also been a question as to other teams intentionally targeting the Giants’ star player. Andrew Baggarly went so far as to call Posey a “marked man.”  Recently Cincinnati Reds relief pitcher Sam LeCure threw a pitch that came close enough to Buster’s knees that it elicited a warning from plate umpire Vic Carapazza.  Manager Bruce Bochy said, “It’s how people get hurt, you know?  We lost our guy for a long time last year, and here’s a ball thrown at his kneecaps.”  Indeed.

The Giants also have Tommy Joseph and Andrew Susac in the system. Neither one is ready to progress to the majors, but both are intriguing prospects that show a real depth for the Giants in this often difficult position. Joseph was particularly impressive at spring training this year, and continues to shine in Richmond.

When asked about the four games he has already started at first base, Buster commented: “I’m good with it.”

Brandon Belt’s future performance may be the deciding factor in what Bochy and Sabean ultimately decide to do, or when they make the move.  Buster has repeated stated his desire to remain catching, but affirmed his intent to do what is best for the team.

What’s best for the team may simply be to keep Buster healthy and out of harm’s way. While it won’t prevent pitchers from throwing behind the team’s best hitter (as the Reds did recently), moving Buster to first will, at the very least, protect him from those incredibly dicey plays at the plate.

The transition may be a gradual one this season. Posey has shown a really impressive passion for the game and has come bounding back into the limelight. People hardly mention the fact that he has recovered from a devastating injury, but it’s there, in the back of everyone’s mind. And surely that ankle must still hurt a little, right?

Buster is an amazing athlete and I think Giants fans just want to see him have a long and productive career in whatever position he plays. As he told MLB.com, “I still say I want to be behind the plate. But I’m not opposed to going over there [first base], when the right time presents itself.”

The time is soon, Buster. 

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