The Bats Fail Jorge Lopez (Game Recap)

[cboemmeljr]

 

[Tony-OH]

Another loss where a poor defensive play was the key to the loss. The one thing Elias has probably learned in all of this losing is the importance of a good defensive ball club.

While Stewart's dive/fall showed he's willing to be 100% effort into a play despite his lack of footspeed and burst, the fact that he didn't have enough baseball wherewithall to know the situation and to pull up and field that on a bounce kinda shows where this team is right now.

So he gets an A for effort, and an F for execution and and F for field awareness. With a runner on first and two outs and the game tied, you don't go diving for a ball unless it's to cut it off from going into the gap, where the run will surely score. In this situation, if he holds up, fields it on the hop, it's 1st and 3rd with two outs and the score still tied. 

Basically it was poor risk management by Stewart.

Good players understand when to go for those dives and when to let them fall because the alternative is much worse than the single. It's all about the situation and in this case, Stewart did not take the situation into consideration or if he did, he choose poorly in his acitons.

[Sports Guy]

Nice outing by Lopez last night although he didn’t miss many bats.  
 

Still, he kept the ball down in the zone a lot.