A bench clearing discussion just occurred in Miami. With Ian Desmond at the plate, Tom Koehler pitched inside, and Desmond took exception. Jarrod Saltalamacchia didn’t like the comments and got in Desmond’s face. Both benches emptied, but there was no pushing, shoving or punching. Of course, if there had been, it would have been impossible to tell who was fighting, since everyone was wearing 42 in honor of Jackie Robinson. 🙂
The Marlins lead the Nationals 6-0 in the top of the fourth.
The Rays acquired Ryan Hanigan from the Reds, the Marlins signed Jarrod Saltalamacchia, and the Red Sox picked up A.J. Pierzynski. I’m a bit surprised the Red Sox went for Pierzynski, as he seems a bit unlikable. They seemed to make a big deal about having great clubhouse guys, but Pierzynski tends to get under the skin of opponents, not his teammates. He also made one of the great plays in ALCS history.
I like that Hanigan has a great career OBP, but he slipped in 2013. We’ll see if that’s age or just a small sample size problem.
The Red Sox beat the Yankees 8-4 as the Yankees bullpen gives up a grand slam to Jarrod Saltalamacchia that broke a 4-4 tie. The Red Sox have now scored seven runs or more in six of their last nine games and seven of 12 games in September.
Robinson Cano picked up half the Yankees hits, going 4 for 4 with three doubles and two RBI.
The one through five hitters in the Boston lineup reached base nine times against the White Sox Thursday night. That set up Kevin Youkilis and Jarrod Saltalamacchia for seven RBI as the 6-7 hitters combined for five hits and three home runs. The Red Sox beat up Philip Humber, who allowed nine of the runs, for eight hits in five innings.
The Red Sox have now scored 56 runs on the road in ten games, but they also allowed 54, hence the 5-5 record away from home.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia wound up in the hospital due to vomiting. He may have the flu, and Jason Varitek will catch Tim Wakefield Wednesday night. That’s always an adventure.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Jacoby Ellsbury, batting eighth and ninth for the Red Sox respectively, each drove in three runs as Boston downed Toronto 8-1. Ellsbury hit a home run just inside the Pesky pole for his three RBI, while Jarrod used two singles. Both are hitting under the Mendoza line for the season, but today they picked up the rest of the team.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia gets his second hit of the day as the Red Sox get to Bartolo Colon in the bottom of the fifth. His double drives in Kevin Youkilis, and the Red Sox take back the lead 7-6 as they go to the sixth inning. Saltalamacchia only had one hit on the season coming into the game.
Via BBTF, Jarrod Saltalamacchia taps away the yips:
It was only in the last couple of years, after Hanson and his wife, Birgit, started their own business in Tampa, that he discovered the system of tapping.
“I didn’t make it up,” Hanson said. “I learned about it by reading Gary Craig, who is in California and developed something called ’emotional freedom techniques.”‘
Hanson’s initial reaction? “I thought it was stupid,” he said.
But after an encounter with a distraught high school player for whom, Hanson said, the technique produced immediate results, Hanson became a convert. The system, he said, is modeled after the pressure points found in acupuncture. And athletes with the yips, he said, “are in so much pain.”
“Tapping helps clear out the negative emotion,” he said. “Say you struck out to end the seventh inning, and you still have to play defense and might come up to bat again. How to clear out that negative emotion?
“You focus on the negative. Start on your eyebrows. Focus on the negative. Each site, your eyes, below your nose, below your lip. The idea is to do a tap lap, go down and around, tap the top of your head, then start again. Tapping helps clear out the negative emotion.”
Hanson said all of the counseling he did with Saltalamacchia was done over the phone. “I’ve never met Salty,” he said, “but he became pretty functional, pretty fast.”
This reminds me of something I saw many years ago. Mel Tillis is a singer who stutters when he talks, but not when he sings. He was on the Mike Douglas show one day, and they were having a very frank discussion about the stutter. Tillis demonstrated techniques for stopping the stutter, including walking his fingers down his leg while he was speaking. It was a distraction. I wonder if the tapping fits into that form of treatment.
Good for Saltalamacchia that he found something that worked.
Jarrod Saltalamacchia is back with the Red Sox after a leg infection nearly led to surgery.
Remember when the Rangers seemed to have more catchers than they could deal with?
Catchers Jarrod Saltalamacchia (immediately following his reinstatement from the 15-day disabled list) and Taylor Teagarden were both optioned to Triple-A Oklahoma City earlier this week, a development I refrained from writing about because … well, at this stage, what is there to say? Teagarden had embodied an offensive cipher of the highest order — owing in no small part to the fact that he was swinging late on even high-80s fastballs — and looked to be in some danger of having his confidence completely shot, while Saltalamacchia’s throwing power/accuracy look to be issues that nobody within the organization is quite sure how to address.
That’s a lot of talent going down the drain. Did Texas overestimate the abilities of these players, or did poor coaching retard their growth?
The Brewers sent catcher Matt Treanor to the Rangers for Ray Olemdo.
Treanor had been in competition with George Kottaras for the catching spot behind starter Gregg Zaun, but now he seems to be in competition with nobody unless the Brewers pick up another catcher during the next two weeks or for some reason the team has a change of heart and thinks Jonathan Lucroy is ready by opening day to be a major league player.
Assistant GM Gord Ash said Kottaras was grading out better than Treanor in the meetings the organization had and there were three key areas where they liked Kottaras more.
With Jarrod Saltalamacchia injured, the Rangers needed someone solid behind the plate to fill in as a backup. Matt’s one of my favorite players, because he loves the game so much.