Picture of a Smart Guy
Question for ya:
Which player led his league in being hit by pitched, round, hard, horsehide covered objects traveling at high rates of speeds, also defined as pitched baseballs?
Mark Canha, that’s who.
In a recent interview, he essentially said it bothers him not a whit, and unless it is a hardball hurtling towards his cranium, he finds he oddly does not move much when hardballs are incoming towards other parts of his anatomy.
Incoming + lack of movement = HBP, as Ron Hunt figured out while getting up in the majors nearly 6,200 times and being hit nearly 250 times. Essentially, if he got up 620 times in an average season, he’d get hit 25 times.
Besides bruises, the HBP has had an interesting side effect on Mark:
He gets on base a lot more.
He was a former 7th rounder in 2010, usually a pretty unfruitful draft round.
He has defied the odds by having compiled 3,034 career plate appearances so far, along with boatloads of ducats. Beats being a staff accountant somewhere.
Arriving in the big leagues at age 26, he played fairly sporadically with Oakland for his first 4 seasons. He has 1,127 plate appearances and was HBP 25 times, not a low rate, but not abnormally high.
His OBP for those 4 seasons was about .315, pretty marginal. Over that period his total salary was $1.765 million, which is not that much after taxes.
Smart guy that he is, he realized that given he was not someone with Ruthian power or Brock speed, adjustments were called for if he would play more, get paid a lot more, and go from marginal to significant.
Enter the HBP.
In the second 4 season segment of his career, Canha has been hit by pitch 113 times in 1,907 PAs. In other words, more than double the rate. Has it helped his OBP the past 4 seasons? Duh, what do you think? About .370 OBP, without breaking out my calculator.
.370 plays a lot. .315 without big power does not. Smart guy, that Mark Canha.
His 2019-22 salary aggregated over $24 million, and he is signed for $10.5 million in 2023. My guess is that if he had a normal HBP rate, his 2019-23 earnings would be half of what they will be. MLB teams like the Mets pay more for guys who can get on base.
The HBP for Mark Canha is the price of success, simply put.
Ouches subside, cash in bank account does not.
Frankly, why every marginal hitter in baseball, like the 2015-18 version of Mark Canha, and there are many of them throughout baseball, does not strive to become the 2019-22 version of Mark Canha mystifies me. Heck, he only averaged .245 the past 3 seasons. Who pays big bucks for that?
Smart man, that Mark Canha.
(Dominic Smith you and your .246 lifetime average and just a .308 career OBP might make you a prime candidate for this approach).
And of course, it is not ALL about money.
Mark, at age 34, is playing a major role for a true World Series contending team. (Dom Smith is not).
It doesn’t get better than that for Canha.
And he very smartly positioned himself to be there, one HBP at a time.
OUCH! (SMILE….KA-CHING!)
AND LET’S NOT FORGET CANHA II:
Tim Locastro was plunked twice on Sunday, making it 39 times HBP in 552 career plate appearances. Tarrrr-git Practice!
Like Canha, Locastro would be going nowhere fast without the HBP.
PHAM VISION:
Being quite near-sighted and astigmatic,I understand the challenges of trying to hit severe pitches when looking through the side of your eyeglass lens. No laser surgery when I was a kid, and my blue eyes could not tolerate contact lenses. All I was left with was a blurry side view as pitches arrived.
I sometimes wonder if I would have been any good as a hitter had laser surgery existed in “my day.”
These days, I have high index progressive lenses that are very small, which reduces the coke bottle look tremendously and the weight, too…but it is hard to get “progressive” into small frames with a high prescription, so they are not perfect…but that’s OK. I don’t like Coke.
Back to the Mets - I saw Tommy Pham got updated glasses, says he sees a lot better, and goes on a Sunday hitting tear. I get it. Mr. Pham, however, your acuity of vision is paramount, for your job, so please keep that eye prescription perfect.
ESCO-BLAH
Eduardo Escobar this spring and 16 at bats this season through Sunday has gone 5 for 50 with no HRs, 2 doubles, 2 RBIs. I hear Sinatra singing, “And now, the end is near, I know my hitting’s hurting’”.
Time to cut him? Todd Frazier was 3 for 35 the year he retired at age 35. Age is a tough issue. Escobar is getting baseball-old. Or maybe he just needs new glasses.
WEIRD AND WHACKY:
Baseball can just be weird, sometimes.
LAD 2B Miguel Vargas got up 50 times last year and walked just twice.
This year, he is 2 for 5 with EIGHT WALKS.
I WANNA START!
SethLugo left so he could start, not relieve.
In his first SDP start, 7 inning, 4 hit, 0 BB, 1 run, 7 K - man’s an ACE.
CARRASC-SLOW:
Apparently the just turned 36 year old Carlos Carrasco dropped to his slowest velocity ever during "long innings", but claims it is no problem. We'll see if age is catching up to yet another Mets player, or it was a one-game aberration. He does look old, but of course, looks can be deceiving.
TEN NUTHIN’? WAZZUP?
11 comments:
Opening home game weather: Cloudy with occasional rain in the afternoon. High 59F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
I liked the Cahna sign when it happened and I like it even more now. A two year affordable decent player.
I will have more on Carrasco later.
Apparently horsehide is no longer used (or we'd have incredible #s of dead horses).
https://vocal.media/fyi/baseballs-were-originally-made-from-the-foreskins-of-horses.
There used to be a rule that a batter had to try to get away from a pitch, but if it still exists it's rarely enforced.
Mack Ade was looking for Calvin Ziegler. I read that he had surgery to remove bone chips in his elbow.
thanks Raw
Yes, hopefully Ziegler comes back some time this season.
Canha is high IQ. He knows without HBP, his value drops to back up OF. Starting OFs are paid much better. He debuted at age 26, so he’s had to earn it every step of the way.
I agree with Tom. Canha has a good baseball IQ and is skilled enough to make a difference for the Mets. Very glad they signed him.
It will be interesting to see what happens next if Pham's vision was the issue with his decline in hitting. He and Mark Canha will vie for time in LF, and the DH spot is also an opportunity to get ABs for both of them.
Here is an interesting assignment… 04/03/23 RHP Blade Tidwell assigned to Binghamton Rumble Ponies from St. Lucie Mets.
Wow
Love it
As Raw noted, that Tidwell thing to AA seems incorrect. The wording I had above I copied right from the site. It has been removed by them. My guess is they made a mistake.
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