I have a post on whether Cliff Floyd was a winner. Back in my bicycle delivery days, a guy I worked with was neighbors with Cliff Floyd when he signed with the Expos. He liked to talk about the car Floyd bought with his signing bonus. Around this time (1992 or so) it was still an open question as to what kind of career Floyd would have, so it’s nice to see that Cliff has more or less done well for himself and his family.
But I don’t think it’s fair to any player to put the entire onus on winning baseball games on one player, particularly a good but not great player like Cliff Floyd. Cliff does what he does and sometimes his teams win and sometimes they don’t. I mean sure things like leadership and being a role model for younger players are important, but given a choice between that stuff and hitting, fielding and pitching, I’ll take the skills all day. Ultimately, those who excel at the jobs they do tend to be respected by others who do the same job anyway. Whatever you’d like to say about Gary Sheffield’s personality, a guy who hits baseballs for a living can’t help but show admiration for his skills.
It is my understanding that guys like Barry Bonds and Albert Belle were far better liked in the clubhouse then they were in the sports sections of the local papers and I think that’s what it comes down to. Whatever their personality flaws, they got the job done and I think that’s what players look for most in a teammate. When healthy, Floyd has tended to get the job done more often than not.
2 responses so far ↓
1 alex // Jun 12, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Off topic question but ive been wondering what your opinion on this is….
Are there exceptions to the rule that a pitcher has no control over whether a ball is a hit once it leaves his hand? Some pitchers (Mariano Rivera for example) have one pitch that is so good it induces many weakly hit balls. Although he doesn’t really have any control over where that ball goes, isn’t it more likely that a bunch of weakly hit balls are going to be outs than a bunch of hard hit balls? I looked up Rivera’s hits/balls in play and then looked up another reliever (Brian Wilson) that doesnt throw any of his secondary pitches more than 15% of the time. While Rivera was at between .24 and .28 hits/balls in play from 2004-2006 (didnt count this year because its too early, his h/bip did go way up in 2007) while Brian Wilson from his only year where he faced more than 140 batters was 1/3 of the time. Probably a stupid question but just wanted to know what your opinion is on pitchers with a single dominate pitch.
2 Pete Toms // Jun 15, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Rod Nichols – AAA pitching coach here last season and a former teammate of Belle’s in Cleveland – told me last year that Belle was a great teammate, “awesome”. Nichols’ spin was that Belle hated the press, he thought they were a pain in the —. Nichols told me that Belle was the hardest working guy he ever played with, hitting, working out, video….and thought the press interfered.
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