Kendrys Morales has hit a “plateau” in his rehab

Yesterday we heard that Kendrys Morales may begin the year on the DL. Today Mike Scioscia elaborated on that, and it doesn’t sound good:

“It’s not a setback; there are just some plateaus guys hit,” said Scioscia. “You can’t force things. He’s going to keep working, keep moving forward.”

One thing that I wonder: how much of his “plateau” has to do with conditioning? I didn’t write about it when I was at Angels camp in Tempe, but Morales does look to be a tad roundish and out of shape. Which, on some level, is understandable given that his particular injury — his ankle — makes running and getting on an exercise bike troublesome. But it also can’t help a guy trying to work out at first base after so much time off.

A lot of people in the comments to Bill’s posts on the Urena-Acuña posts last night and in response to my rant about it in the recaps and on Twitter this morning, have talked about how silly writers don’t understand the culture of baseball and how pitchers have been brushing back batters for years. One guy said that old players would laugh at me for my naive notions about such matters and that, to make it as a pitcher, you have to brush guys back and reclaim the inside of the plate and make the hitter uncomfortable in the box.

I think that’s all b.s. obviously, but they are right about one thing: I don’t play baseball and baseball players probably know this stuff better. With that in mind, I’m going to defer to seven-time All-Star Michael Young’s thoughts on the matter of brushbacks and purpose pitches:

Another thing about pitching inside. The whole “make them uncomfortable…move their feet…brush em back” thing is complete BS. It doesn’t work. When a kid starts playing kid pitch at 8, he gets hit. When he gets to be, say, 12 it hurts a bit more. When he gets to high school…

— Michael Young (@MikeyY626) August 16, 2018

…pitchers throw inside because good hitters shouldn’t extend their arms. So they get hit. College, same thing. In A ball kids throw gas with zero command, so same good hitter gets hit again. In big leagues, with a runner on 3rd and fewer than 2 outs, infield in, here comes….

— Michael Young (@MikeyY626) August 16, 2018

…that predictable sinker that runs in. Hitter gets hit. My point…you can’t make a good hitter uncomfortable. He’s been there, done that. He’s laughing in his head because your heaters inside are simply teeing him up with a 2-0 count. Then he’s going to torch you….

— Michael Young (@MikeyY626) August 16, 2018

….you wanna get him out? Stop listening to that pitching coach giving you that outdated, awful pitching 101. It’s actually Quick Shower 101. Go in, out, up, down, change speeds, avoid patterns, and stop tipping.
Clean it up.

— Michael Young (@MikeyY626) August 16, 2018

If you think you know more about this than Michael Young, you now have his Twitter handle and can tell him yourself.

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