Protecting the Shields -- The Nick Cafardo Thread
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I'd echo JMOH's thoughts as well, only differences would be the following:
1. My notes column following goes back to 1972, the beginning.
2. I've hated Cafardo since he covered the Pats. Same shit, different sport. He also made a snide crack about the Pats run being over, can't remember exactly what it was. Only that he made it circa 2006. Looks like his prediction is going to be off by a decade or two.
1. My notes column following goes back to 1972, the beginning.
2. I've hated Cafardo since he covered the Pats. Same shit, different sport. He also made a snide crack about the Pats run being over, can't remember exactly what it was. Only that he made it circa 2006. Looks like his prediction is going to be off by a decade or two.
I have fond memories of Gammons, Whitesise, and Edes, but never bothered with Cafardo because I never liked his football coverage. Yet, I look forward to reading this thread every week, and JMOH is a large part of why I love coming to it.
Same here. Late 70s. And a brief stint as a reporter. We still get the Sunday Glob delivered. And I still read the sports section first. Farking Cafardo approximates shooting fish in a barrel. But so what. Its 20 minutes out of my Sunday morning. And then another few reading the takes here.
In an odd way, it helps keep me sharp. When Cafardo writes, "so-and-so only hit 225 off of closers last year, demonstrating that he lacks toughness and grit," my first instinct is to try and find what the rest of the league does against "closers," which usually leads to the conclusion that old so-and-so is actually pretty good.
5. The composition of the competition committee is missing scouts, who know more about baseball than anyone, and umpires. Smart people such as Theo Epstein, Joe Girardi, Buck Showalter, Dave Roberts, Mike Matheny, etc., are involved, but scouts and umpires see baseball from a unique perspective.
This is such a great answer to a tremendously stupid question.
Noting the particular insanity that is the Cafardo-at-the-Globe situation is the exact sort of thing I come here for.
Holy crap, Nick isn't vehemently anti-bat flip. Of course you have to have the résumé to back up the flip, which I guess means you have to be a potential Hall of Fame inductee and not some bum ass rook who hasn't earned the right. Still surprising.
What? Jed. Nick. Taking away offense is the entire point. Nobody gives a shit if a big left handed slugger gets a few singles taken off their stat line. Gritty sluggers hit dingers, not singles. We all watched the era of cartoon baseball when your average slugger was sporting 24" pythons and it was an aesthetically ugly brand of baseball. Do we really need to take away one of the few concepts that give the pitcher an advantage? Can Cafardo really not connect the dots between pace of play/length of games and making it harder for teams to make outs?
I actually think Nick has a point here. If you are attempting to include stakeholders in the pace of game discussions why exclude umpires? They are the one authority figure on the field who could actually ensure that the games move at a crisp pace
But it is so rare that Nick actually has a point that makes sense(maybe the first time in 10 years) that I thought it should be highlighted and duly noted. Go back to your normally scheduled programming of Carfardo bashing.
The placeholder image on Cafardo's Globe page always cracks me up. Nick in an empty Fenway wistfully looking towards the playing field thinking about all the gritty players who played the game the right way. All the scouts who pounded the pavement from Peoria to Port St. Lucie. A simpler time where teams didn't use shifts, men had haircuts you could set your watch to, and when teams weren't afraid to give over the hill aging vets contracts for past performance. The good ol' days.
Nick's continuing war against defensive shifts is amusing in its obstinacy. God forbid the game evolve in any way.
And there are ways around the shifts! It's not like someone built a brick wall from second to first. You could bunt down the third baseline literally anytime a shift is presented to you. Do that five or six times in a row and there won't be a shift.
Rather shitty of you to ask Gary Sanchez, Jason Bay, and Mark Teixeira to learn how to bunt at this late date.
Dick.
I was thinking about this a bit this morning and what's a defensive shift? It's nothing more than an adjustment. Baseball, and all of sports, are full of adjustments. A player comes up to the majors and hits a bunch of fastballs, word gets out and soon pitchers are throwing him nothing but slop. The player either adjusts or he's back in Pawtucket.
Football teams don't throw (or run) on every down. Hockey teams don't run the same line game after game after game if things aren't working (well, the Bruins might but ...). Basketball teams don't run the same play every time down the court. If teams did this, it would a. be stopped immediately by the opposition and b. be boring as fuck.
It's up to the hitter to beat the shift and ADJUST his thinking. These guys are experts, they can take the ball to the other side of the field or they can bunt or they can work a walk. All they have to do is anything but pull the thing into the shift. But for some reason, Nick finds the idea of one professional adjusting to the tendencies of another professional maddening and I'm not sure why. The only argument that he's come up with is that "Offense is fun!".
The job of the defense is to stop the offense, this is true in all sports. Why is this any different than putting a goalie in a hockey net (offense is fun!) or matching defensive backs against wide receivers (Again, offense is fun!)?
Cafardo is a shallow thinker, but even this quest he's on is Mr. Turtle-esque, even for him.
Football teams don't throw (or run) on every down. Hockey teams don't run the same line game after game after game if things aren't working (well, the Bruins might but ...). Basketball teams don't run the same play every time down the court. If teams did this, it would a. be stopped immediately by the opposition and b. be boring as fuck.
It's up to the hitter to beat the shift and ADJUST his thinking. These guys are experts, they can take the ball to the other side of the field or they can bunt or they can work a walk. All they have to do is anything but pull the thing into the shift. But for some reason, Nick finds the idea of one professional adjusting to the tendencies of another professional maddening and I'm not sure why. The only argument that he's come up with is that "Offense is fun!".
The job of the defense is to stop the offense, this is true in all sports. Why is this any different than putting a goalie in a hockey net (offense is fun!) or matching defensive backs against wide receivers (Again, offense is fun!)?
Cafardo is a shallow thinker, but even this quest he's on is Mr. Turtle-esque, even for him.
To Nick shifts are a gimmick, like statistical analysis or the internet. He hates these non-scouts trying to be smarter than everyone. We should just ban them.
A coincidence to good to ignore, courtesy of wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball#History
You're right, Nick is just really resistant to change.
If this was 40 years ago, he'd probably be railing against the DH.
If this was 55 years ago, he'd hate California baseball and expansion.
If this was 70 years ago, he'd wonder why integration was a big deal*.
* I'm not suggesting that Cafardo is racist. For all of his foibles, that's something you can't pin on him. But the dude loves the status quo more than anyone in the world. Integration was the ultimate game changer.
Further to JMOH's point: infielders have been "shifting" against various hitters for roughly 150 years. So how many steps is an infielder allowed to take from his "standard" position before Nick starts shaking his fist at the sky? 3-5 steps is probably permissible, but is 10 too many? Is more than 15 steps being unfair/mean to the hitter? (And what about outfielders? Are they allowed to do anything more than "shade" a hitter one way or the other?)
The first step is determining what the "standard" position actually is. Does the handedness of the hitter affect that standard (shading to pull, etc)? Does playing the infield in with a runner on third count as a shift? Will playing the corners in in a bunt situation be outlawed? What about middle infield at double play depth? Should infielders be allowed to hold runners on if it takes them away from the standard position?
If Cafardo or anyone else who hates shifts actually sat down and tried to define what should and shouldn't be allowed as "shifts", they'd either drive themselves nuts with the details or they'd realize the folly of the attempt and give up the crusade.
The "Williams Shift" from 1946
Obviously, those who talk about being against the shift are talking about extreme examples. But that's what makes it just absurd. They don't want the outfielders to play precisely straight-away for every hitter, or not to be able to play shallower when a throw to the plate is critical. They don't want to stop being able to bring the infield in, or put on the rotation play to cover bases in bunt situations. They're just against one variation of the shift, which is a ridiculous stance to take.
It's like saying pitchers can throw fastballs, but not on the inside half of the plate.
Obviously, those who talk about being against the shift are talking about extreme examples. But that's what makes it just absurd. They don't want the outfielders to play precisely straight-away for every hitter, or not to be able to play shallower when a throw to the plate is critical. They don't want to stop being able to bring the infield in, or put on the rotation play to cover bases in bunt situations. They're just against one variation of the shift, which is a ridiculous stance to take.
It's like saying pitchers can throw fastballs, but not on the inside half of the plate.
That graphic depicts something far more radical than what we're seeing in today's game. The leftfielder is basically at deep short. The second baseman looks deeper and far closer to the line than the modern shift. Nick would develop a permanent eye twitch if team's shifted like that today.
Did Ted Williams really pull that many balls directly down the line that it would make that shift effective?
I'm not 100% sure about the ED, but according to Montville's biography on Williams (which if you haven't read, you really, really, really should -- it's an excellent book), Teddy Ballgame was too prideful to hit the ball the other way when the shift was on. He wanted to hit the ball so hard that he rammed it down the fielder's throats.
Or something equally as poetic.
Which, to bring this back to Cafardo, is a gigantic difference in the mindset between people like Williams--all athletes really--(Put any defense you want on me, I'll find a way through it!) and Cafardo (This isn't fair! Outlaw it! NOW!).
Or something equally as poetic.
Which, to bring this back to Cafardo, is a gigantic difference in the mindset between people like Williams--all athletes really--(Put any defense you want on me, I'll find a way through it!) and Cafardo (This isn't fair! Outlaw it! NOW!).
Are there any baseball innovations Nick actually likes?
Also, I recall Nick writing a few ballwash reviews of 'smart, innovative' Joe Maddon when he was managing the Rays and used to shift a lot (he has recently done a lot less of that). But if Joe was smart for shifting then why would it be bad?
Also, I recall Nick writing a few ballwash reviews of 'smart, innovative' Joe Maddon when he was managing the Rays and used to shift a lot (he has recently done a lot less of that). But if Joe was smart for shifting then why would it be bad?
IIRC, Williams once spent an AB fouling off pitches trying to put one down the throat of a heckler in the stands.
You're thinking about the exchange between Williams and Ty Cobb in Montville's book. Cobb told Williams that he should just bunt down the line every time against the shift but Williams didn't want to do it because he felt like it was his obligation as a slugger to provide extra base hits for the team and not just weak singles.
Rare that anything I read by Nick teaches me something--and I assume he's not the only one who has reported this--but this was pretty incredible, I thought:
That is incredible. Looks like there was a slew of stories last April.
http://archive.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/brewers-pitcher-blaine-boyer-says-mission-was-life-changer-b99706885z1-375733041.html
http://archive.jsonline.com/sports/brewers/brewers-pitcher-blaine-boyer-says-mission-was-life-changer-b99706885z1-375733041.html
If only there were people whose only job was to ask questions of players and coaches to help get answers to such mysteries.
So we don't know who helped Benintendi get *out* of his slump. But Nick is damn sure who got him into it. (Hint: It wasn't computers; and apparently not video either).
https://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/06/04/andrew-benintendi-rediscovers-stroke-win/g0JFGMxGkeSmoa2m6MSyJO/story.html
I loved Nick calling for a return of the bullpen cars in his Sunday notes column. Yet another sign he thinks baseball peaked in the late 70s.
I'm not seeking out his column. What is his reason for bringing the bullpen car back? Kitsch? Please don't tell me he thinks it will speed up play.
No way it saves any time. By the time they get the car out of where ever they store it (where would that be at Fenway?), the pitcher gets in, and it drives him to the infield, he could have jogged in and probably thrown a warm up pitch or two. It's probably a wash at best.
I kind of like the bullpen car idea but purely for nostalgia it absolutely wouldn't speed up play and I don't ever see it happening.
I believe they used to keep the it in the runway where they keep the tarp which is where it would have to go it if ever came back.
I believe they used to keep the it in the runway where they keep the tarp which is where it would have to go it if ever came back.
It would be cool if they had bullpen cars on a day they are wearing retro jerseys or something like that. Not all the time.
Historically it was kept in that runway where the ground crew hangs out near the tarp. They narrowed that alley a few years back so I'm not sure it would fit there anymore.
The cart is still parked just inside of Gate A, though, IIRC, after a few years being at Twins Souvenirs, across the street.
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