Last night, Marc Carig published a post with something in it that always draws my interest. He discussed A-Rod reviewing video and possibly identifying what’s been ailing him at the plate. For whatever reason, I always love to hear about players and teams using video to catch things. Maybe I’m so drawn to it because it’s one of those things that I’ll likely never see.
While I have access to replays and can slow them down, replay them over and over again, etc., I’ll likely never have access to the same sort of video study that the players and coaches do. I think that highlights something we discuss occasionally: the information gap between us and the team. It’s a given that the team has more information on just about everything than we do, and this type of video study is definitely on that list.
There’s another part of that information gap, too. It’s not in the information itself, but in the analysis. You and I could probably watch video of a player swinging or throwing over and over again and make some obvious points, but the things Kevin Long and Alex Rodriguez found in that video are probably on such an acute, detailed level that you and I could not pick them up without having them pointed out for us.
It’s a hard thing to quantify, but I can’t recall many players who have as much baseball awareness as Alex Rodriguez. He may make a physical error every so often, just like everyone, but he rarely makes a mental mistake and always seems to know what to do on defense and on the base paths. He also seems very self-aware when he’s going poorly and usually knows what to do to correct it. Hopefully, the correction is coming soon. A hot Alex usually means a hot Yankee team.
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4 Responses to Carig: A-Rod identifies possible problem
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TIQ IQ
Arod is the most baseball aware player I can think of, which shouldn’t be much a surprise because he probably is the player who is most a fan of the game (my favorite park of the Bin Laden coverage was learning Arod was, like most of us, watching the Phillies vs. Mets).
Not only does Arod seem fully aware of everything happening in the game, but he also seems to know the rules. The best example of that was the recent play in Toronto where to Jays wound up at third base. Arod immediately started pointing at the correct runner to tag. That might seem like a little thing, but how many times do you see a fielder tag everyone in sight, and sometimes the umpire for good measure?
This makes me think that A-Rod could be a successful coach after his playing days, if he wanted to spend his time doing that.
Interesting thought Tom. He definitely seems to have the baseball IQ to do it, and he seems to work well with younger players (often hear of him training players in the offseason, such as melky this past year and Yonder Alonso when he was playing at Miami).
I only wonder if the media’s attacks on Alex have ruined owners perceptions of Alex.
[...] took a look at this yesterday, and I thought it might be useful to follow up my analysis on A-Rod’s plate discipline from [...]