M-C-G wrote:wallus wrote:M-C-G wrote:
Hence my let's see comment. I just think it is a weird fit given the kind of player he was. It would be like if someone told me Geoff Jenkins was named hitting coach. The guy would rather bat .100 than get rid of his leg kick. Or Ben Sheets being your bunting coach.
Happy to be wrong, just seems odd versus someone that was a really cerebral type player in their day. A guy like Jon Lucroy or Lorenzo Cain would have been more what I was expecting.
What made him a low iq player?
Not a high IQ in my own opinion. Just my collective opinion from the past. I never felt like Weeks, Hart, Fielder or Sheets were particularly high IQ guys. Might be his approach, might be his defense, might be his unwillingness to try another position to extend his career, frankly I’m not sure but him not being a high IQ player is where I am at.
I think Rickie was kind of yip-prone, but he was one of the only patient hitters on the team in that era. Granted, that's not saying much, but it was nice to see someone besides Prince draw a walk on that team of free-swingers. Staying at 2B was probably more of a self-interest thing than a low-IQ thing, and you could cynically argue that it was actually smart to refuse.
The whole era in general was extremely low-IQ though. I agree with that premise wholeheartedly, but I think Prince, Hart, Yuni, Gomez, Plush, Segura, and even "batting average Braun" were bigger culprits than Weeks. Braun and Fielder were the ones who really drove me nuts because they were supposed to be leaders, but as talented as they were, they didn't set good examples for being a smarter, more disciplined team. Hell, I still wish they had trade Prince before he even came up so they could keep Hart at 1B. I think that alone would have made that era much less disappointing.
And yes, I am calling that era disappointing. They arguably amassed some of the best MiLB talent ever seen on any team in my lifetime and only had like 3 respectable playoff games.