Flores, Blah Blah Blah

Svrluga has his record 498th thread on Flores/Schneider, putting him just 2 shy of the prestigious 500 mark.

A few interesting points in there, including an extended quote from Dmitri Young (which shows why so many writers love him; he's good in a pinch).

What caught my interest was this quote from Bodes:

"He certainly has the ability to back up, platoon and play every day," Bowden said. "But what the timing is, I don't know." And that leads into the quote I used in the $.35 edition today [see how much stuff doesn't make the paper?]: "I consider Brian Schneider the best game-caller in baseball. To develop the young pitchers the way we have this year could not have happened had Brian Schneider not been the catcher. I don't want to take anything away from Brian. But as far as Jesus, does he have the ability to compete and win the job at some point? Yeah, he does."

"Brian's our catcher. That's the way it is. He's our guy, and certainly he's disappointed in what he's done offensively. He knows those numbers have got to come up. But his game-calling ... we couldn't get there faster with another catcher. You can't develop the Hanrahans and these young pitchers without Brian Schneider as your catcher."

My comment there, which I'll reproduce here is:

"To develop the young pitchers the way we have this year could not have happened had Brian Schneider not been the catcher"

What young pitchers developed this year?

Chico's been so-so. But nothing special. Did he 'develop'?

Bergmann had a nice stretch mid-season. But was that because of Schneider? Or was that because St. Claire worked with him to change his motion/delivery of his breaking pitches?

Hill has been solid, but he was solid in previous years. He just hasn't been healthy.

What about Simontacchi? Bacsik? Speigner? Hanrahan? None of them developed. Does Schneider, if he's getting credit for the success, deserve some of the blame for their failures?

And what makes good "pitch-calling" anyway? How do we recognize it. It seems like it's a pretty solid BS dump to try to explain things nobody really understands.

If Schneider were batting .260 would they be falling all over themselves praising his calling abilities?

I glossed over it the first time I read Bodes' quote, but it's interesting that he points to Hanrahan, a pitcher with a 5.14 ERA and who walks the park, as someone who's developed. If that's a 'success', I'd hate to see failure.

There's also an extended quote from him praising Davey Johnson for 'finding' Jesus Flores. I'm glad that Davey targeted him last year, but the overhyping of praise sometimes gets to me. Bowden seems to me to be the kind of person who goes out of his way to praise the team, not so much because he wants to share the glory, but because it reflects well on him: "Look at this first-class team I've assembled." That they're his long-time friends (or to be less diplomatic, his cronies) makes me lean even more in that direction.