If I hadn't read it on the Web, I wouldn't have believed it: Manny Ramirez asks Red Sox if he can work from home.
The Red Sox have tentatively agreed to allow Ramirez to telecommute, claiming that although their offense may suffer without him at the ballpark, their defense in a vacant left field may substantially improve.
OK, so it's a joke. But it occurred to me last night, while flipping back and forth, that today we've got a whole class of players who are not expected to give anything like maximum effort most of the time. Last night in the second inning, with a runner on first base, Manny Ramirez smashed a grounder up the middle. Yuniesky Betancourt made an acrobatic snag, flipped to second baseman Jose Lopez, who made a smooth pivot to complete the double play. The thing was, though, that when the ball arrived at first base, Ramirez was still three or four steps away. The play wasn't close. If he'd sprinted out of the box, he might have been safe or he might have been out. Either way, it would have been close.
Of course, Ramirez isn't the only sluggardly slugger out there. When Jason Giambi hits a grounder to short right field -- where it's fielded by the second baseman, when the shift's on -- he jogs to first base, and is out by 20 feet. When Barry Bonds hits a routine grounder, he jogs halfway to first base before peeling off toward the dugout. I'm picking on these three guys because I've seen them recently, but I don't imagine they're the only ones.
What's interesting is that nobody seems to mind. Some might consider this yet another sign of the coming apocalypse, but others might regard this as simply the triumph of common sense. Hustle's great, but Ramirez or Giambi or Bonds pulls a hamstring while running out a routine grounder, was it worth it? I think it comes down to percentages. If Bonds hits a grounder and has a 1 percent chance of being safe if he sprints, then he probably shouldn't sprint. My problem with Ramirez last night was that his chance of being safe, with just the normal major league effort, was well north of 1 percent. Of course, he also hit two homers last night, which is why he'll probably never hear another word about that double play that shouldn't have been.
Rob Neyer
