He's No Dave Roberts
I think I’ve mentioned this somewhere on this site before, having the speed and base running experience of Dave Roberts to come off the bench down the stretch and into the post season last year was a luxury that few teams, if any, have experienced. Not only is Roberts an experienced and great base stealer, he’s also a guy that is capable of being (and was until he came here) an everyday player.
This of course, is the reason why he has so much experience and is so good at base stealing. You just don’t have the opportunity very often to make a trade for a starting outfielder who is also a great base stealer, and then have the luxury of being able to use him off the bench exclusively for speed late in the game. As we all know, without him, we don’t win games 4 and 5 of the ALCS. Coincidentally, there’s a great piece about him and the “stolen base” in today’s Globe.
What’s my point? A lot of people seemed to think when we picked up Adam Stern in the rule 5 draft and then finally got him back healthy and onto the big league roster, that he would be a great replacement for Dave Roberts. A lot of people are wrong.
Adam Stern may be a very fast runner with a good track record of stealing bases in the minors, but he’s also a rookie, and no matter how fast he is, how much experience and how many stolen bases he has down there, none of that makes up for the fact that he is still trying to learn how to play and run the bases against experienced big league pitchers and catchers.
This has been glaringly evident in the last few weeks. I can think of at least 3 instances where he has been sent in to run for a player and was picked off before getting to second base, and although they all go down as “caught stealing”, they were all the result of bad reads and none of them were close.
Last night was the most recent one where he misread a dropped ball by catcher Joe Mauer and broke for second only to be picked off easily as the ball did not get very far away from Mauer, who was able to pick it up and gun him down. There was 1 and possibly even 2 other instances in the last couple of weeks where he did not get the timing down on the pitcher, broke for second too early, and was picked off between first and second. And then there was the blunder at third when he broke for home on a ground ball and got himself caught in a rundown, costing us a man in scoring position.
The report on Stern is that he has good speed and is a good base stealer, but not much power. He’s good defensively and projects to be a 4th outfielder who can play all 3 positions. To me this translates to a player who will probably never get enough at bats to become a great base stealer in the major leagues, speed alone does not make up for lack of experience.
So, he may end up sticking on the roster all year (it’s the only way we can hold onto him), and he may even continue to get into games late as a pinch runner and help the team, but I would not expect to see this guy pulling off any spectacular base running feats anytime now or in the future. In fact, it’s not likely we’ll ever see what happened last year ever again.
This of course, is the reason why he has so much experience and is so good at base stealing. You just don’t have the opportunity very often to make a trade for a starting outfielder who is also a great base stealer, and then have the luxury of being able to use him off the bench exclusively for speed late in the game. As we all know, without him, we don’t win games 4 and 5 of the ALCS. Coincidentally, there’s a great piece about him and the “stolen base” in today’s Globe.
What’s my point? A lot of people seemed to think when we picked up Adam Stern in the rule 5 draft and then finally got him back healthy and onto the big league roster, that he would be a great replacement for Dave Roberts. A lot of people are wrong.
Adam Stern may be a very fast runner with a good track record of stealing bases in the minors, but he’s also a rookie, and no matter how fast he is, how much experience and how many stolen bases he has down there, none of that makes up for the fact that he is still trying to learn how to play and run the bases against experienced big league pitchers and catchers.
This has been glaringly evident in the last few weeks. I can think of at least 3 instances where he has been sent in to run for a player and was picked off before getting to second base, and although they all go down as “caught stealing”, they were all the result of bad reads and none of them were close.
Last night was the most recent one where he misread a dropped ball by catcher Joe Mauer and broke for second only to be picked off easily as the ball did not get very far away from Mauer, who was able to pick it up and gun him down. There was 1 and possibly even 2 other instances in the last couple of weeks where he did not get the timing down on the pitcher, broke for second too early, and was picked off between first and second. And then there was the blunder at third when he broke for home on a ground ball and got himself caught in a rundown, costing us a man in scoring position.
The report on Stern is that he has good speed and is a good base stealer, but not much power. He’s good defensively and projects to be a 4th outfielder who can play all 3 positions. To me this translates to a player who will probably never get enough at bats to become a great base stealer in the major leagues, speed alone does not make up for lack of experience.
So, he may end up sticking on the roster all year (it’s the only way we can hold onto him), and he may even continue to get into games late as a pinch runner and help the team, but I would not expect to see this guy pulling off any spectacular base running feats anytime now or in the future. In fact, it’s not likely we’ll ever see what happened last year ever again.
posted by Bob at 8/07/2005 11:16:00 AM
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