March 16, 2007
Increasing Range
Miguel Tejada took complaints about his lack of range seriously this off season. He's come to camp in excellent shape and is actually working on increasing the area he can cover:
Shiner said Tejada's workouts have been focused on improving his foot speed and movement. During one drill, Tejada shuffles back and forth between cones as Shiner rolls baseballs to him. The exercise is designed to maximize the steps to get to the ball, simulating the act of fielding a baseball while moving left or right. Team officials have been pleased with the range Tejada has shown thus far in camp.
"He is moving around a lot better than he did last year," Perlozzo said. "When his knee was bad [last year], I knew there was nothing that I can do about that. ... It was an up-and-down year for him defensively for multiple reasons."
Teammates said Tejada got a bad rap for his defense last season, considering that he was nursing knee and hamstring injuries the first couple of months of the season. Tejada did make 19 errors, tying his lowest total for a full season in his career. But it was his range that was often criticized by scouts and baseball officials.
"He wasn't fully healthy early last year and yet he still went out there and did all he could. Of course, your range is going to be limited, but most guys wouldn't have even been out there," Gomez said. "He got healthy soon thereafter, and I thought he was great. I don't think anybody could deny that. He got this label, where someone says one thing about range and all of a sudden you don't have range. It sticks. I think it is really unfair."
We'll see if his PMR improves at the end of the season.
Posted by David Pinto at
02:56 PM
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His attitude, by every single report out of Florida, has improved dramatically this year. It was a problem last year and he was flat out lazy some days. But this season he seems to be back to his highly motivated hyperactive normal self. This could be great things for his production.