Josh Hamilton broke his humerus and will miss six to eight weeks of action.
Hamilton hurt the shoulder on a head-first slide into home plate during the first inning. He was tagged out on the play, running on a foul pop-up when third base coach Dave Anderson told him to go for the score. It’s not a decision that Hamilton agreed with.
Hamilton is blaming the third base coach, but there was no reason for him to slide like that if he was going to be out anyway. Needless to say, this is a big blow to the Texas offense, although Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinzler, Mitch Moreland and David Murphy are all currently hitting well enough to carry the team.
You don’t ask your britle MVP to tag up on a foul pop up in the 1st inning with Brad penny and his 10+ ERA on the mound and Nelson Cruz due up. Bad things can happen on close plays at the plate, even if you slide. Thats an incredibly short sighted and dumb call by the 3B coach. Have to balance risk vs reward there, and the risks greatly outweighed the reward of a run in the 1st inning.
Can’t blame Josh for being ticked off.
One hopes that this incident–along with Rafael Furcal’s injury–is used as a cautionary tale from Little League all the way up to The Show: correct feet first sliding technique is a lot safer than lettingyour inner Rickey Henderson out to play.
“Nelson Cruz, Ian Kinsler, Mitch Moreland and David Murphy are all currently hitting well enough to carry the team.”
Trouble is, there are lots of holes in the lineup right now, too. Borbon, Torealba, Andrus and Beltre are all on the wrong side of the .700 OPS line. That’s why the Rangers have only scored nine runs in their last three games. Beltre should hit better eventually, but the career numbers for the other three don’t inspire confidence.
The pitchers have performed so well, with the best staff ERA in all of baseball by a mile, that the holes haven’t hurt much. But the Rangers can’t realistically expect that 2.49 staff ERA to continue forever.
People run through stop signs and also hold up when waved in quite a bit. Mike Schmidt said on Mike & Mike this morning that runners are taught to essentially “trust themselves” as much or moreso than follow the basecoach. Hamilton made the choice to start running, if he scores or even if he’s out and doesn’t get hurt this is a non-issue or conversely everyone will be talking about how aggressive and amazing he is.
There is plenty of blame to go around, I just don’t think that it is exclusively the coach’s fault.
The Rangers teach their players to slide feet first. Hamilton chose not to do so. Also, who died and made the third base coach boss? Hamilton made the choice to run, he made the choice how to slide. I’m sure he regrets throwing the coach under the bus, especially since Ryan and Washington have already come out supporting the coach.