Saturday Discussion: Michael Bourn's new found discipline?
by Stephen Higdon on Nov 22, 2008 2:02 PM CST
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PrintLike all of you, I'd love nothing more than for Michael Bourn to do a 180* about face and lived up to some that promise Ed Wade lavished on us -- and to be fair analyst from BPro too. I finally got around to reading the Astros.com piece on Bourn's staggering reversal of his K:BB ratio in the Dominican League:
I've never seen anything on translations from Winter Leagues and I know that winter league baseball is a hugely limited sample size -- akin to Spring Training, but even less quality pitching -- but it's nice to see that the man can control his destiny at the plate.
My question for discussion is (please discuss, I'm trying to procrastinate on writing a paper -- enable me):
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No, it probably won't translate.
But I hope it will. As I recall, BPro wrote a while back that he showed good discipline in the minors. Hopefully, Coop and Co. don’t try to screw with his plate approach – I know that they were talking about how he should be making more contact and hacking away. I don’t think we have any good reason to expect him to suddenly become a spectacular leadoff hitter, but we can hope he improves.
It'd be interesting
To hear if Bourn is going back to his natural approach to hitting without the Astros staff leaning on him to do somethingelse, or if it’s just a fluke.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Nov 22, 2008 3:22 PM CST up reply actions
Ugh
If he struggles again in 2009, manager Cecil Cooper will have Reggie Abercrombie and Darin Erstad as fallback options.
God help us all.
Indeed
Abercrombie is just the RHB version of Bourn…Erstad just can’t play CF full time with Carlos Lee in LF.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Nov 22, 2008 3:30 PM CST up reply actions
I read the article this morning...and it's the kind that makes me nervous.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that Bourn’s numbers look good…it sure as heck beats seeing bad numbers out of him in the winter league. But it makes me nervous when writers make such sweeping conclusions about a performance reversal from such a small sample size. Yeah, congratulate him on doing good so far, but don’t jinx him or get everybody’s hopes up. I recall that Bourn was putting up a .350-.400 OBP during most of the first 2/3 of spring training games; and it certainly got a lot of fans’ hopes up. But the competition gets stronger as spring training continues…and regression to mean also sets in as the sample size increases…and the next thing we know is that Bourn’s numbers plummeted.
Do winter league performances carry over…sometimes and sometimes not. Does anyone remember Hidalgo’s glowing winter league stats when he was signed before the 07 spring training? (Unfortunately, his luck ran out in spring training and he was just terrible.) Luke Scott always had terrific winter league stats…and they may have foretold his great 06 tear. The competition probably is more like high minor leagues than major leagues, though.
the pitching is variable but not necessarily bad
Pitchers down there he might be facing this year include Carlos Marmol, Ubaldo Jimenez, Damaso Marte and Ervin Santana.
Or maybe its the team cheerleader/godmother
60/40 nearly 24 hours later
Interesting.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Nov 23, 2008 10:24 AM CST reply actions
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