An Unfair Advantage

Imagine if a wide receiver were permitted to wear a big pillowy jacket around his torso so he wouldn’t be afraid to get hit going across the middle. Imagine if basketball players were allowed to stop play any time they were too tired to run allthe way down the court on each play..

There would be an outrage. You can’t change the game just because certain players aren’t ready to accept the risks inherent in the game.

But baseball makes this kind of exception for hitters by allowing them to wear body armor to the plate. Hitters like Barry Bonds and Mo Vaughn and countless others now strap huge plastic casts onto the arm facing the pitcher, ensuring that even if they get popped in that arm, it won’t hurt.

I’m all for protecting the players—Kevin Seitzer’s faceguard, ankle and shin guards for batters who consistently foul balls off their feet, and the like—but the body armor has to go. It removes the hitter’s healthy fear of a ball hurtled at them at 100 miles per hour, and allows him to dig in at the plate. I’m surprised that hitters who use these elbow guards haven’t dipped their fortified arms into oncoming pitches as a cheap way of getting on base.

It’s probably folly to think baseball will outlaw these prosthetics any time soon. Baseball is in love with offense, and the guards give hitters just one more advantage. The also keep the big-money sluggers in the lineup longer, allowing them to return to action soon after injuring an arm.

NOTES
There’s no indication that Jim Tracy (or anybody else, for that matter) reads these pages, but he’s certainly noticing the same run production statistics I see. He moved J.D. Drew out of the three hole, as I suggested in my post last week, and it paid dividends immediately in the Dodgers’ win over Los Anaheim. I still don’t like a lineup that lines up three lefty hitters at the top of the order in the switch-hitting Izturis, Drew, and Choi—I’d rather see Kent in the middle of all those lefties—but Tracy has shown a willingness to fiddle in hopes of getting more runs out of a lineup that’s hitting well, just not all at the same time.

The Dodgers showed their formula for winning yesterday—good starting pitching, timely hitting, and a lights-out bullpen. For the first time, we got to see what the combo of Yhency Brazoban and Eric Gagne looks like, and it’s impressive. The closer and the heir apparent shut down the Angels with barely a whimper. It’s not time to get too excited, since the Angels simply aren’t the same team with Vlad out of the lineup. But the Dodgers can take heart in the notion that their opponents will only have seven innings in which to score in a typical game.