Finally, some swagger in the Old English D
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Thoughts On Javier Baez Acquisition
A.J. Reilly: So let’s move to the peanut gallery. And let’s talk about Javier Baez. Javier Baez was the big off-season acquisition for the Detroit Tigers to play shortstop, to come in, and hit the ball hard.
Now, one of the things that you may have noticed, and if you didn’t notice it, then I think you were just living under a rock this last week. But it seems every time we travel to somebody else’s ballpark Javier Baez is getting into it with the fans.
There’s a lot of talking, a lot of chirping. You get it as a major league baseball player all the time. I don’t know if you remember back to the Giants series or even picked up on it. But in game one of the Giants series, there was a guy sitting behind home plate. And every time Jonathan Schoop was on deck, he kept saying, shoop, there it is.
Because apparently, he doesn’t know his name, Schoop. But anyway, you hear those kinds of things all the time. And what Javier Baez has done is when he has doubled, when he has hit home runs, he’s engaged with the fans.
Now I know that there’s gonna be a lot of people that say he doesn’t need to do that act like you’ve been there before, just run it out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We hear it. It’s old, it’s tired. It’s a terrible take. This is actually something that I love that Javier Baez brings to our team. Look in life. I’m all for humility. When it comes to sports humility is maybe not at the top of my list.
When Javier Baez hits a tank to left field and turns around and puts the finger up to the mouth, to the fans. I love it. And you know why I love it? Look, I don’t think Javier Baez’s a leader on this team.
I think that Javier Baez thrives when there are other people that lead. I think that he thrives when he has an Anthony Rizzo or Kris Bryant like they did in 2016 when they were all teammates with the Cubs.
But you know what Javier Baez brings to this team swagger. Something that this team has lacked since the teardown and something this team has needed desperately. And he’s brought it is the average where we want it to be. No. Do we think that he strikes out too much? You may think that, but the reality is that’s just too high.
He’s gonna hit the ball hard and he’s gonna strike out trying. But the one thing that we cannot get away from and the thing that I love about this is the swagger that Javier Baez is bringing to the old English D.
We’re not on this level yet, but I liken it to the bad boys’ era a little bit. That team had swagger. You knew you didn’t mess with that team. And now we’re coming into a series with a relief pitcher in Amir Garrett who has a bad history with Javier Baez. And I want the guy with swagger on my team. When we got a guy on the other side, running his mouth.
If you remember back to last weekend’s series, Amir Garrett was struggling against Riley Greene. Okay. A rookie has less than a hundred bats in MLB.
He’s been phenomenal for us and really has changed the tone of our offense. Amir Garrett was struggling against him. He ultimately got him a strike out on a three, two pitch.
That was way below the zone outside. And then he started running his mouth, held his hands up, running his mouth. And who said something to him? The guy on deck number 28.
Javier Baez told him, go back to the dugout, go back to the dugout guy. And I know you’ve seen the video. I know you’ve seen the interaction, but I love it.
You may hate it, but I love it. And I want more of it. And that’s the thing about Javier Baez, right? When he’s on your team, you love that he’s on your team. When he is not on your team, you probably hate the fact that he’s not on your team, or you’re playing against him. But this is exactly what the Tigers need.
The numbers will be there. I’m not concerned about that at all. But what isn’t measured on the back of a baseball card? What you don’t get from fan grafts and baseball-reference and baseball savants is swagger.
Javier Baez would be a plus in that category and he is doing it, wearing our old English D and I absolutely freaking love it. I wanna see more of it. And I think I will, this week when they play the Kansas City Royal. So keep it up Javy! I’m cheering for you!
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