GIVE ME ONE REASON...

GIVE ME ONE REASON...


...WHY PENA WON'T HIT 50 HR'S THIS SEASON.
With only 24 games behind us in the 2009 season the player known as El Gato has already accumulated 10 homers. If you stretched that out over an entire season that would put him on pace for... wait for it... 68 home runs this season. Now, I'm certain he'll have a few slumps, but its getting harder and harder to come up with a reason why he can't end up with at least 50.


...WHY NAVI HAS GOTTEN LAZY.
Dioner Navarro had a break-out season last year, and was rewarded with a trip to New York for the All-Popularity game, but so far this season has done nothing but underperform. At the time of this post his BA is an anemic .173 and he has an OBP of .184. Statistically there is no real way to quantify how poorly he's played defensively to open the season, as they don't have a stat for "lazy". I do find it interesting that he's only been charged with 2 past-balls so far this season considering I saw 2 during the last Kazmir start alone. If you've been watching the games you've seen the obvious mistakes, as-in stabbing at the ball with the glove while still on his haunches versus making the text book slide to stop the ball. His laziness is starting to cost the Rays runs (or more specifically assisting the other team in scoring them) and that's unacceptable. As a catcher, if you're not playing well defensively, then its impossible to see past how poorly you're performing offensively. What happened? Navi trimmed down during the abbreviated offseason, so he'd be quicker, but the opposite has occurred. Some people (myself included) are starting to view it as a lack of hunger due to the fact that he made it through arbitration, got himself a nice paycheck and has put it on cruise-control. I hope I'm wrong, but the point remains the same; Navi's gotten lazy.


...BJ UPTON CAN NO LONGER HIT.
After hitting an acceptable .273 last season, and having a phenomenal post-season, during which he hit .288 and smashed 7 homers in 16 games, Bossman underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum. I seem to remember hearing at that point that BJ has had the same or a similar injury the past 6 years running and that he intended to change his swing so as to avoid re-re-re-re-re-re-injuring his shoulder. If that were the case I'd say, okay it'll take awhile for him to reprogram his body for his new swing, and at first I cut him some slack, but from what I can tell his swing has not changed- so why can't he hit? So far this season he's hitting .185 with a grand total of zero home runs. He has brought his OBP up to .316 by taking 13 walks, which is nice, but we want and need more from BJ.