“Twenty years ago, pitchers were great athletes that hit third and played shortstop in high school on days they didn’t pitch. From that, they developed skills that well-rounded pitchers must have, including the ability to hit, to catch a ground ball and to run the bases.”

I thought a lot of high school pitchers hit well.  Don’t many pitchers DH in college?

Cabrera is not good at getting hitters out or preventing runs, but both aren’t importnat to him.

Some of the great pitchers throughout history had great pick-off moves.  Most didn’t. The great pitchers tend to say the hell with guys on base and worry about the guy with a bat in his hands.

All too often I see a pitcher worrying about the guy stealing second so much….throwing over and stepping off…until he no longer has to worry about it because the batter cracked a double and the runner is on third or back in the dugout.

I’m not advocating never worrying about the runner, but too often the guy on first seems to be the priority.

TC

Well, I think Cabrera is about as anti-Maddux as there is now.

What’s ironic is that when Maddux started, there was a pitcher who was more anti-Maddux than Daniel Cabrera… Bobby Witt, who once walked 140 people in 143 innings, threw as many as 22 wp in a season, and as many as 5 errors in a season. 

This Kurkijan essay is one of those essays sportswriters write when great players retire, where they look back at their youth in fondness and decide that the great player was emblematic of an era.  They aren’t, of course - that’s why they are great.

Don—maybe, but first he’d have to demonstate over 4-5 years—like Maddux did—that he is capable of actually hitting that part of the zone when he wants to.