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John Russell scoffs at logic

I try not to worry too much about quotes from baseball managers. I understand that they are rarely going to say exactly what they are thinking, often resulting in weird, illogical quotes. But John Russell’s reasoning for keeping Freddy Sanchez at the top of the order left me speechless:

“Without going into a lot of detail, you have to look at it a lot of different ways,” Russell said. “Yeah, we’d like to get Freddy going. But you also have to look at how the lineup balances out. Best case scenario: Freddy hits in the two-hole, and we’ve got a very potent top of the order. If we move him to the bottom, now we’re looking at too many potential outs in one spot. If Freddy’s not hitting where he is now, we’ve got Nate McLouth and Ryan Doumit right there. If you put him near the bottom, the pitcher’s there.”

So, in an effort to keep the 7-8-9 guys productive, you would prefer to sacrifice the top of the order? I guess that makes sense, considering the players at the top get the most plate appearances.

Sure, I guess the occasional inning of Raul Chavez, Sanchez and the pitcher would be uninspiring. One would not have high expectations for scoring runs in that inning. But that is no reason to purposely hinder the top of the order.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 20th, 2008 at 3:14 pm and is filed under John Russell, Raul Chavez, 2008 Pittsburgh Pirates, Nate McLouth, Ryan Doumit, Freddy Sanchez. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.