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Terrry Payne's avatar

Thx tons for the info on outfield positioning. If nothing else I always wondered how they coded all that info to fit on a small card.

Man do I miss you sharing your convos with Uncle Rusty. That man is a treasure. Whither does he wander these days?

Renfroe can't hit and now his defense has gone to hell? The team's in big trouble.

Paul Blair of the Orioles was the absolute king of playing shallow. The man was fearless.

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Lee Judge's avatar

Last I heard Rusty was still in the organization doing something, can't remember what, but they like to keep smart baseball people around.

Hunter's got a .467 lifetime slugging percentage which is probably what they like about him, but we're only three games in so I'm not ready to give up on any player or team yet.

Thanks goes to Mitch Maier for showing me one of those cards and explaining what everything meant and Rusty advocated playing shallow rather than deep and said we should position ourselves for the good pitch, not the bad one. But pitchers can't have it both ways, if they want the broken bat bloop caught they have live with the deep line drive over and outfielder's head.

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Karen Zeilinger's avatar

I know very little about baseball but you make it interesting. The same way Click and Clack, the Tappet brothers were able to get me interested in cat repairs. After I read your column, I can also have a fun conversation with my mom. She loves baseball. Thanks

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Lee Judge's avatar

Karen: You're welcome and as always the credit goes to the players and coaches who explained things to me so I could explain things to fans and I'm right there with you, I enjoyed listening to Click and Clack because they made car repair interesting even though "cat" repairs would be even more fascinating.

(No sweat, I hit the wrong key all the time and it's surprising how often the typo is hilarious.)

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Karen Zeilinger's avatar

😂

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Mary Lappin's avatar

Seems like it would be more economical and effective to build a team to fit the K (they did it about 10 yrs ago, remember) than to build a whole new ballpark. But that would mean the ownership’s priority is winning, and I’m sure they have other thing$ in mind. 🤨

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Lee Judge's avatar

There's a lot of money to be made building a new ballpark whether we need one or not so I don't think they'll stop trying anytime soon.

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Twila Samborski's avatar

I love the K. Please no move to the badlands! Mo. wake up, but that probably won't happen if current decisions are any indication.

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Lee Judge's avatar

They got a lot of stuff right when they built Kauffman and it's considered one of better ballparks among players which as we both know doesn't mean much to the people who want to make more money.

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Erika Zeitz's avatar

How much is Hunter Renfroe making? I love these posts, Lee! Keep it up!

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Lee Judge's avatar

I've seen a lot of outfielders make the same mistake, but it shouldn't happen to a Royals player. On the other hand, Hunter has 159 games left to make up for it.

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