{"id":4238,"date":"2012-06-20T20:18:01","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T00:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4238"},"modified":"2012-06-20T20:18:01","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T00:18:01","slug":"thoughts-about-the-peralta-pine-tar-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=4238","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts about the Peralta Pine Tar incident"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joel Peralta tips his cap in mock respect after getting tossed for having "an excess of pine tar" in his glove. Photo Patrick McDermott\/Getty Images via bleacherreport<\/p><\/div>\n

While watching the Nats game tonight, the broadcast team of Bob Carpenter<\/strong> and JP Santangelo<\/strong> posted the following quote (as referenced in several of the beat reporters<\/a> columns earlier today):<\/p>\n

\u201cJust looking down the road, if I\u2019m a major league player that may happen to want to come to play for the Nationals<\/a> in the future, I might think twice about it, under the circumstances,\u201d Maddon said before Wednesday\u2019s game. \u201cBecause this is a guy, this is one of their former children here that had really performed well and all of sudden he\u2019s going to come back to this town and they\u2019re going to rat on him based on some insider information.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The MASN broadcast team also relayed a follow-up to this quote, mentioning that a beat reporter that they had not “seen before” asked Joe Maddon<\/strong> a very probing, intelligent question.\u00a0 As transcribed from the MASN broadcast:<\/p>\n

“Well, your guy was the one who was caught.\u00a0 A lot of people are talking about the fact that you’re trying to deflect the blame to the to the other team across the diamond.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maddon apparently blew off the question, didn’t ask it and challenged the questioner whether or not he covered baseball on a regular basis.\u00a0 These quotes somewhat disappointed me; I have a lot of respect for Maddon by virtue of stories about him in Jonah<\/strong> Keri<\/strong>‘s excellent book “The Extra 2%,” about the rise of Tampa Bay.\u00a0 Perhaps he’s indeed trying to deflect blame and control the story.\u00a0 But I think Maddon does the exact same thing, if he’s in the same situation.<\/p>\n

Last night’s gamesmanship was probably unnecessary, but a move that you have to make in the right situation.\u00a0 Yes the Nats probably were aware of the fact that Peralta had a tendency to overdo the pine tar, by virtue of his playing for our team a couple years ago.\u00a0 Was last night an odd time to cash in that particular chip?\u00a0 The team was losing, but the game was close, and Peralta is clearly a great asset out of the Rays bullpen.\u00a0 In fact, it surprised me to see the team not pursue signing Peralta after his excellent 2010 season for us.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the message was meant more for Peralta; who knows what type of departure he had from the team.\u00a0 But you would have to think that if the team still respected him as a player, instead of trying to get him ejected perhaps Davey Johnson<\/strong> would have taken the same route that Tony LaRussa<\/strong> did in the 2006 world series, when hurler Kenny Rogers<\/strong> clearly had pine tar all over his throwing hand, a fact that became clear when the high definition cameras caught him throwing in the first inning.<\/p>\n

The fact is, when its hot out and you’re sweating, getting a grip on the baseball can be very difficult.\u00a0 I certainly use pine tar heavily when I play to get an extra grip on the bat.\u00a0 I have certainly played with pitchers who had a secret stash of pine tar “hidden” within their glove in order to get an extra snap on the curve.\u00a0 Is this a violation of baseball’s rules?\u00a0 Of course it’s against the stated rules.\u00a0 The question is whether it is as egregious a transgression as (say) stealing signs or sneaking a peak at the catcher’s signs.<\/p>\n

Much like a football player moving teams and taking along insider information on formations and trade secrets, inside information either brought to or left with teams can put managers in a tough situation.\u00a0 Billy Martin<\/strong> was well aware of George Brett<\/strong>‘s proclivity to over-tar his bat, and he waited until a key game situation (i.e., a go-ahead homer) to cash in that particular chip.\u00a0 Clearly Johnson made the decision to use the information he had on hand, last night in a key late-inning situation.<\/p>\n

What do you guys think?\u00a0 Bush league move?\u00a0 Good use of information?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While watching the Nats game tonight, the broadcast team of Bob Carpenter and JP Santangelo posted the following quote (as referenced in several of the beat reporters columns earlier today): \u201cJust looking down the road, if I\u2019m a major league player that may happen to want to come to play for the Nationals in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[859,858,137,860,419,857,594,168,755,283],"class_list":["post-4238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlbpitching","category-natsgeneral","tag-billy-martin","tag-bob-carpenter","tag-davey-johnson","tag-george-brett","tag-joe-maddon","tag-joel-peralta","tag-jonah-keri","tag-jp-santangelo","tag-kenny-rogers","tag-tony-larussa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4238"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4242,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4238\/revisions\/4242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalsarmrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}