A Long But By No Means Complete List

He should have caught it. No excuse, really

Why is the entire system full of catchers who can’t actually catch?

Here’ my two cents. Ichiro’s throw short-hopped at little bit, but the ball was perfectly true and was about two feet high when it passed directly over home plate. It passed straight through the strike zone. Johnson, though, had his glove-hand fingers pointed at the ground the whole time fielded Ichiro’s throw as though it were a breaking ball. In effect, Johnson gave up on catching the ball cleanly, and thus on tagging the runner out.

Had Johnson positioned his glove like this,

he would have had no problem catching the short hop. If the ball stayed low, he could’ve just backhanded the ball (easier with a catcher’s mitt than fielding it like a first baseman).

Instead, Rob Johnson, trying to block the plate, positioned himself as though he were blocking a breaking ball in the dirt, like so.

When he field sthis way, Johnson has little chance of catching the ball cleanly because, in this position, his glove has almost no scope for lateral or vertical movement. It’s just stuck between his crotch. Even if he does field Ichiro’s throw cleanly, he’s still starts in a tough position (longer distance to the runner, plus he must flip his hand over) to lay the tag down. Johnson, essentially, made it almost impossible for himself to catch the ball cleanly, which killed a golden, golden, golden chance to kill a guy at homeplate. To me, a mental mistake like this is inexcusable at the big league level. That’s what convinces me that Johnson is not a major league caliber player in any aspect of his game, except perhaps throwing out runners, but that’s hardly more than a fraction of a win impact in a full season. He just sucks.

Perhaps you should lurk around this site more before taking part in the comments section.

We must have vastly opposing views regarding the quality of your work.

I gonna bet he didn’t see it