Archive for the ‘Brett Lawrie’ Category

Bad news for Brett Lawrie’s agent came fast and furious this week. First he hears his boss come out against buying up the arbitration years of young players. He then sees his client’s Baseball Reference Wins Above Replacement number take a tumble when Baseball Info Solutions announced a new way to handle shifts in their Defensive Runs Saved metric.

The new calculations drop Lawrie’s season dWAR (defensive Wins Above Replacement) from 3.5 to 1.9, a stinging blow to whatever contract conversations revolved around WAR. (aka not a stinging blow at all.)

BIS has tweaked how Def Runs Saved handles shift plays.Brett Lawrie (still great) is no longer #1 in WAR. Replaced by Mike Trout.

— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) July 14, 2012

Brett Lawrie might have fallen off his historical defensive pace but the Jays defense is still winning games. Taking advantage of a fortunate vantage point for Friday night’s game, I took note of the Jays shifts in action.

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So, if you haven’t heard, apparently Brett Lawrie got himself into a bit of a minor swearing controversy last night, stemming from his alleged response to some heckling fans at Miller Park.

Parkes has a recap of this bit of business over at Getting Blanked, in which he quite rightly notices that, judging by a change in tone about the events, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tom Haudricourt may have found himself lost in an all-encompassing cloud of maple-defensiveness, as a slew of Twitterspherians fell over themselves to insist that there are other people whose fault abso-fucking-lutely must be pointed out in order to spare to whatever degree possible the good name of the Golden Brett.

Never heard of anything like that happening before, have you?

Anywho… not one to be outdone by whoever was running to Haudricourt with their point-missing petty technicality of a defense, Twitter’s deliciously over-the-top fake Lawrie, @HelmetTosser13, came running to the rescue of damn good sense…

HERE’S THE THING, FUCKSTICKS. IF U & YOUR PUSSY KIDS CAN’T HANDLE A FULLY DIMED CARPET BOMBING OF FUCKS, YOU’RE GONNA FUCKING LOSE. IN LIFE.

— NotReallyBrettLawrie (@HelmetTosser13) June 20, 2012

Amen!

Image via Scott Cunningham/Getty.

It was early in the season when I posted a “what up with Brett Lawrie” thing which was promptly shit on. It was still early and he is still very young were two very common (and completely fair) counterpoints.

Nearly two months later, Lawrie’s numbers still lag behind the expectations/wishcasting of a desperate fanbase. Where is the power? Why so many groundballs? Can you go a little easier on the caught stealing, bruh? At no point should this concern be confused with disappointment but…his persistent struggles remain a little puzzling.

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus turned the old Bob Elliott classic “turn some quotes from scouts into a column trick” this morning, with most attention given to minor leaguers (with an assist from DJF’s own Bradly Ankrom!)

There is one nugget on a big leaguer at the end…the starting third baseman for your Toronto Blue Jays, Brett Lawrie.

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A reader sent me the above picture of a broken Brett Lawrie game-used helmet from May 14th against Tampa that’s in the Blue Jays Shop Memorabilia Clubhouse at Rogers Centre, selling for $1000, and…

Hang on a minute…

Brett Lawrie? Tampa series?? Broken helmet???

Could it possibly be??!?!

“The date is one day off,” the email says, “but Im guessing that Brett Lawrie doesn’t smash that many helmets.”

That’s probably true, I thought to myself, but do these newfangled high-tech helmets maybe get tossed around like insignificant pieces of molded plastic when they’re in the hands of millionaires and millionaires-to-be? Yeah, probably. So, since it only labelled the helmet as “broken”– not, say, “smashed at the fucking feet of umpire Bill Miller”– and since the date was one day too early, I decided I’d better look into it.

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I missed this on Twitter a couple days ago, but… um… no, Brett, I don’t think you didnttt.

Think I didnttt ??? twitter.com/blawrie13/stat…

— Brett Lawrie (@blawrie13) May 24, 2012

Let’s take a closer look here, shall we?

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In the top of the eighth inning of tonight’s 8-5 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays, Toronto Blue Jays third baseman Brett Lawrie was called out on a controversial base running play.

MLB’s official rule 7.02 states the following:

In advancing, a runner shall touch first, second, third and home base in order. If forced to return, he shall retouch all bases in reverse order.

A runner is “forced to return” when a fly ball that is in the air is caught by a fielder on an opposing team. Such was the case tonight when Lawrie, already on first base, advanced to second on Yan Gomes fly ball while it was still in the air. Once it was caught by B.J. Upton in center field, Lawrie went back to first base.

He didn’t touch second base on his way back because he claims he didn’t leave the base in the direction of third base:

But as umpire Rob Drake saw things, he most certainly did advance to third before heading back to first base without touching the bag at second:

Lawrie failed to make friends once again with the umpiring crew, two days after returning from a suspension for the last time he aggressively questioned a decision. Things were moderate by comparison this time as his helmet stayed on his head after the energetic player jogged a dozen or so feet in the umpire’s direction to ask why he was called out.

According to Lawrie in the post game scrum, “Don’t argue,” was the only response that Drake would offer. Perhaps, in addition to not invading an umpire’s space, Lawrie would also be better served by not knocking them out of the game with foul balls either.

Although, watching that second GIF again, I don’t know what possible defense he could’ve offered to justify what was ultimately his base running error.