The_Hater wrote:I don't really get the Ruiz thing. He puts up a 1.000+ OPS last year in a decent sampling of AB's even though Cito obviously didn't like the guy and then sure enough Cito sits his butt this season, even against LHP early, while Overbay puts up some of the worst numbers for any starter in MLB.
Ruiz is not a first baseman, though. He managed to average an error every 6.7 games at first throughout his minor-league career (and a .982 fielding percentage), which is spectacularly bad, and when combined with his lack of range makes him a non-option at first base.
As for his hitting, pitchers just stopped throwing him pitches over the plate, as Met said. There's no reason to...even last year he swung at 40% of pitches out of the zone, which made him the third-worst offender in that category behind Bengie Molina and Pablo Sandoval. There's one small difference, though: whereas Molina and Sandoval were making contact with those out of zone pitches three-quarters of the time, Ruiz was making contact three-eighths of the time.
It simply wasn't a sustainable formula for a big-league hitter, and I suspect that the organization recognized that fact.
