Comments on: CF Is An Island

By: Dan Mellen

Dan Mellen — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:02:41 +0000

I read that Mike Cameron played shortstop in high school and Curtis Granderson played shortstop in college. Is that incorrect?

By: acerimusdux

acerimusdux — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:11:12 +0000

“and there’s never been any thought of trying them in the infield, even though they aren’t excluded by their handedness and are definitely premium defensive talents.”

One obvious factor involved in deciding who “fits” in the outfield vs. the infield is height. Perhaps Cal Ripkin, at 6′ 4″, helped change this thinking some, but some players do get tabbed as being “too big” for the infield.

The idea I suppose is that height will be an advantage chasing down fly balls in the outfield, while it may make it a bit more difficult to gracefully get down low and field grounders.

It might be interesting to see the breakdown, especially for the RH players, by height.

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:03:34 +0000

If you’re a left-handed thrower, any ball hit to your right would require a pivot to make a throw to first base. For an SS, that’s every ball hit in the hole between SS-3B, and the time it would take for them to plant, spin, and make the throw is enough to turn a lot of should-be-outs into safe-at-firsts.

By: Derek Rabideau

Derek Rabideau — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 20:03:05 +0000

NBarnes

9 times out of 10 an infielder (non-1b) when making a play with throw the ball to 1st base. If a person is a righty, they “lead” their throw with their left foot and vice-versa with a lefty. When a SS/3B/2B fields a ball their left foot is already pointing in the direction of 1st base. If they were a lefty they would have to rotate their body 180 degrees before they could make the throw. This is time lost and hard to do unless you are very athletic.

By: NBarnes

NBarnes — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:54:39 +0000

Why are lefties shut out from non-1b infield positions? I’ve been playing a lot of sim baseball and started to notice that it’s hard to find good right-mashing infield platoons.

By: Jason T

Jason T — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:34:28 +0000

This has nothing to do with anything, but I spent the first couple years of player pitch when I was young @ SS, even though I was a lefty. Eventually I was moved to CF and to first base (first base only BECAUSE I was a lefty). Southpaws are excluded from half the field right off the bat, it was kinda lame.