Donald Trump has all kinds of opinions about the Yankees

By Craig CalcaterraOct 16, 2012, 12:34 PM EDT
23 Comments

Donald Trump weighed in on A-Rod’s struggles and Derek Jeter’s injury in the past day or so. And he did it with his usual subtlety.

On A-Rod:

Trump called on star Alex Rodriguez to donate his contract to charity. “He doesn’t make the Yankees any money and he doesn’t perform,” Trump tweeted. “He is a $30M/yr rip off.”

If you called into a talk radio show to make that point you wouldn’t get past the screeners due to the cliche and pedestrian nature of his rant, but I guess if you’ve convinced enough people that you’re important, it’s newsworthy.

Trump’s take on Jeter — who just sold his penthouse in Trump’s fancy-schmancy building —  is a little more inventive:

“Derek Jeter had a great career until 3 days ago when he sold his apartment at Trump World Tower,” Trump tweeted. “I told him not to sell- karma?”

Seems like the most likely explanation, yes.

Oy.

Matt Carpenter hit a standup bunt double

Getty Images
By Craig CalcaterraJun 18, 2019, 9:48 AM EDT
3 Comments

The wave of defensive shifts we’ve seen over the past few years has led to a lot of armchair hitting coaches demanding that players bunt to beat it. This is easier said than done, however.

The shift happens because certain hitters tend to pull the ball. Certain hitters tend to pull the ball because pulling the ball is what happens when one gets a strong, quick swing on a pitch one identifies early and which one endeavors to send as far away from home plate as possible. Which is to say that pulling is a skill that is good to have and which is strongly selected for among hitters.

In light of that, “why not just bunt to beat the shift” takes are kind of lazy. Bunting is hard! And it is not a thing guys who get shifted a lot are good at. Most of the time asking a player to do a thing he is not well-equipped to do is a bad idea. Indeed, a hitter voluntarily going away from his strength is something the defense would much prefer.

Most of the time anyway.

Last night Matt Carpenter made those armchair hitting coaches happy by laying down a bunt to beat the shift. And he laid it down so well that he ended up with a standup double:

One batter later Carpenter scored on a Starlin Castro error.

The shift giveth and the shift taketh away.