DUNEDIN, FLA -- The ball left Bill Hall’s bat like a cannon. It landed in Anthony Gose’s glove like a feather. This is the story of one of the most impressive catches a Blue Jays centre fielder has made in a long, long time.
It all started with a first-pitch fastball from Jason Frasor. It came in belt-high and on the outside half of the plate. It looked like a mistake. But Frasor meant to throw it there.
Hall’s been at this for awhile. He’s played 10 years in the majors, more than 1,000 games with five different teams over a long, if underwhelming career. The one thing everyone knows about Bill Hall is he loves first pitch fastballs. It’s the first line of every scouting report ever written on him. He salivates when the first pitch comes in fat and he knows what to do with it. But Frasor said screw all that.
The 34-year-old reliever was frustrated, tired of falling behind hitter after hitter. He just wanted to be ahead in the count for once. So he challenged the next batter he faced.
You could practically see Hall’s eyes light up as the pitch came in. That’ll do, he must have thought. Hall pushed his hands through the zone and drove the ball high, true and long to right-centre field. It flew like a dart, slicing upwards through the warm Dunedin breeze, hitting an apex somewhere around shallow centre and coming down like a small, white asteroid crashing to earth.
“Off the bat, I’m thinking that’s a double,” said Frasor after the game. “No doubt about it.”
But Frasor hadn’t seen Gose yet.
The 21-year-old had entered the game at the top of the inning to play centrefield in place of Colby Rasmus. Gose is 11 years younger than Hall and hasn’t played a single game in the major leagues. If this was war, Hall would be a tenured commander and Gose a foot soldier. But when the ball is in the air, everyone is equal.
Gose saw Hall push his hands through the zone, saw the ball rocket off the bat, heard the crack like thunder through the ballpark.
That’s when instinct took over.
“I just ran,” Gose said. “I don’t even think about it. I just go.”
Gose knew right away it would be over his head. A swing doesn’t make that kind of sound and fall short. So he turned around and off he went.
As he pivoted to his left Gose tracked the flight of the ball with his right eye. Damn that thing was moving fast. It took him a second to get his feet going before he was in an all-out sprint, his head torqued to the right, looking over his shoulder.
About half way to where he figured this rocket was going to land, most outfielders would have had a decision to make. Play it safe, stay on your feet and chase the thing once it lands, or try to make a play. Gose didn’t have to make that decision.
“I knew I would catch it,” the centre fielder said after the game, wiping sweat from his face with his jersey. “I just ran and dove.”
Sounds simple enough. But a lot of things simply said are harder done. Gose had to find the ball, track its flight, determine a landing point, mentally calculate the quickest route to that spot and, most importantly, get there. Meanwhile, the ball is dropping like a penny from a skyscraper. There’s nothing easy about catching that thing. Some 300 feet away, Frasor watched this scene play out like a movie.
“When you watch that from the mound, you follow the ball. Then all of a sudden you see the player,” Frasor said with his hands up in front of him, index fingers extended, before slowly moving them towards each other until they touched right in front of his nose. “And they meet—they come to a point.”
That point was on the warning track in right centre where Gose laid out horizontally, leading with his glove reached out long in front of him. He bruised the ground with his midsection, small brown pellets spraying around him. He slid head first and came to a stop just before the Jet’s Pizza advertisement tattooed on the wall.
The play was made right on the line of success and disaster. If he slid any harder, dove a step later, he would have crashed head-first into the base of the wall.
But great centre fielders just know. They have a tremendous grasp of the space around them, like a sixth sense for outfield fences. They know exactly how big the pocket is that they have to fit into. They can tell when making a play like that crosses over the line from masterful to catastrophe. And they know they often have to play this game tip toeing along that edge.
As Gose’s momentum wore out and he came to a full stop face down on the ground, he hesitated for just a second, as if to make sure he was still in one piece. Then he popped up quickly like a running back does when they’re leveled and want to show everyone it didn’t hurt. The ball was in his glove. And Bill Hall could only stand between second and third shaking his head.
Ben Francisco, running to that same spot Gose was from his station in right field, had the best seat in the entire park for the grab. When Gose popped back up he gave him a sly look and said “nice catch.”
“Thanks,” Gose said, before taking a small hop and breaking into a silent jog back to the dugout as the 5,509 people on hand at Florida Auto Exchange Stadium gave him a standing ovation.
“That’s what we play for — to make a catch like that,” Francisco says, sitting in front of his locker after the game. “When you get a chance to run and make a play like that, you’re always going to go hard for the catch… no matter what.”
Back at the dugout it was all high-fives and “good jobs” from his teammates before Gose could sit down and think about what just happened. Down the bench from him, Blue Jays manager John Farrell and the rest of his coaching staff were in awe of the play, one of a few impressive defensive efforts from the Blue Jays on this afternoon.
They talked about the youthful exuberance Gose and some of his young teammates have shown at this camp, marveling at their skill and desire.
“It’s like The Triple Lindy,” Farrell said with a laugh, remembering Rodney Dangerfield’s impossible dive in Back to School. “I don’t know what the degree of difficulty is for those dives but he made a heck of a catch.”
I'm looking at the walk #'s this spring. We know a lot of these players have power but being selective and pitch recognition are important to long-term success as hitters. Hech had one yesterday, Thames had two today, Lawrie and D'Arnaud with one today as well. Good to see from the younger hitters.
I'm looking at the walk #'s this spring. We know a lot of these players have power but being selective and pitch recognition are important to long-term success as hitters. Hech had one yesterday, Thames had two today, Lawrie and D'Arnaud with one today as well. Good to see from the younger hitters.
That's part of why I can't help but get caught up in the Lawrie hype. Despite his obvious hot hitting during his call-up and the eventual regression to the mean, he showed great ability in laying off the junk that pitchers started throwing to him.
Similarily to how I felt about the Bautista contract, even if he doesn't absoulutely hit his Braun/Wright ceiling, at the very least his batting approach will lend itself to a solid hitting career.
Like many prospects drafted out of high school, Jake Marisnick found it tough to switch from aluminum to wood bats. But last year, after experimenting with various models, he tried a bat discarded by Marcus Knecht, a Toronto native and fellow outfielder for the Class A Lansing Lugnuts.
The experiment seemed to work. Using Knecht’s bat and a couple of others, Marisnick torched Midwest League pitching and vaulted into the company of Travis d’Arnaud and Anthony Gose as the consensus top prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays’ system.
“In high school, all the bats felt the same,” Marisnick said after a recent workout at the Jays minor-league camp in Dunedin, Fla. “I guess I’ve tried 20 or so different models, trying to find the right proportions, the right knob. I’m still using three that I’m kind of feeling out.”
One can only imagine the results when Marisnick finds a bat that feels just right. In his first full pro season last year, he batted .320 with a gaudy .888 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage). He hit 14 homers, drove in 77 runs and stole 37 bases. And he played stellar defence in centre field, complementing his speed with a powerful arm.
He did all that at age 20. The league average was 21.6.
Much was expected of Marisnick when the Jays drafted him in the third round in 2009 and paid him US$1-million to sign. He did not start his pro career until the summer of 2010, playing well in a rookie league before hitting .220 after a promotion to Lansing.
The difference between 2010 and 2011?
“A lot of hard work,” said Marisnick, who stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 220, roughly 20 pounds more than when he was drafted.
He calmed his body movement in the batter’s box, but his biggest advance came in plate discipline and pitch recognition, he said.
“I was always ‘see ball, hit ball,’ ” he said. “The main difference last year was in my mental approach.”
Marisnick wowed the Jays (and everybody else) with his performance at the 2008 Area Code Games, which showcases top players before their senior year in high school. Among all the prospects, Marisnick graded highest in the SPARQ test, which measures speed, power, agility, reaction and quickness.
“We knew he was a very good athlete, good size, good tools,” said Tony LaCava, the Jays’ assistant general manager who oversees the farm system. “The question coming out of high school was that he didn’t have a great senior year with the bat. We happened to see him when he was good.”
Since then, the California native has added pounds, muscle and polish. Success in low Class A guarantees nothing, but success at age 20 opens a lot of eyes, and scouts rave about his future.
“Marisnick has the upside of a five-tool center fielder,” Baseball America observed in its scouting report. “He has strength in his frame and swing, producing plenty of backspin and solid raw power. A hitch in his swing previously had scouts concerned about his ability to hit, but he has ironed out his mechanics and is less susceptible to off-speed stuff.”
Echoed Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com: “Marisnick’s plentiful tools should allow him to hit for average and more power as he matures. He’s an excellent baserunner who should also continue to be a threat on the basepaths. Marisnick can play centre field now, but an outfield with Gose in centre and Marisnick in right should have Blue Jays fans excited.”
Indeed, Baseball America projects that very alignment for the 2015 Blue Jays, with Colby Rasmus in left field and Jose Bautista as the designated hitter.
Marisnick and Gose still have a lot to prove before they form an outfield tandem at the Rogers Centre. But both are getting a look in early exhibition games this spring, and the brass have been impressed.
Gose, also just 21, is expected to open the season at Triple-A Las Vegas, Marisnick at high Class A Dunedin. If Marisnick prospers in the tough Florida State League, he could earn a mid-season call-up to Double-A.
“Each year he’s gotten better and he looks like he’s hitting his stride right now,” LaCava said. “He came into camp in great shape. Watching him take batting practice, it sounds loud. We think he’s ready to have another strong season.”
But Marisnick might well spend the whole season in Florida. General manager Alex Anthopoulos is not inclined to rush a prospect, as he showed with Brett Lawrie early last year
“When Alex took over, we kind of decided were going to slow it down a little bit and be a little more patient with our players,” LaCava said. “We weren’t going to take a chance on rushing a player. So we won’t rush Jake. He’s coming along fine. He’ll tell us by his performance when he’s ready to move to the next level.”
Marisnick, an outgoing sort with a ready smile, says he is patient. Confident too. Even during his struggles in Lansing two years ago, he says he could see the player he became last year, and the major-leaguer he expects to become soon.
“I’ve always seen it,” he said. “I see it in myself every day.”
Just in case anyone is wondering. Lawrie is struggling. He isn't hitting 1.000 like we all expect from him. He's just hitting a measly .579 by going 3 for 3 today. He has an OPS of 1.442 - and still hasn't homered in spring.
Jays are playing two games today. Game one, Ricky Romero had a great outing 3IP 4ks. Lawrie as mentioned 3/3 - he has 5 doubles in spring. No homers so far but Jays are up 9-5. Thames went 1 for 3 today.
In the other game, Jays up 2-0 when our number 5 hitter, Jeff Mathis decided to homer. Snider is 0-1 in that game. David Cooper was on base when Mathis homered off Hanson. Kyle Drabek had a clean first inning, 2 groundballs and a K, 3 up 3 down. That game is in rain delay.
Just wanna say, David Cooper deserves a chance to play somewhere. The guy could be a decent hitter but is stuck since he only plays first base. He should have a major league job somewhere; I think he could hit .275/.350 with maybe 15 homers and 30 doubles in a season; just needs a position...
Barring any injuries, I think the roster is pretty much set. I'd be shocked if it's anything other than this:
Arencibia
Lind
Johnson
Escobar
Lawrie
Thames
Rasmus
Bautista
Encarnacion
Mathis
Francisco
Vizquel
Davis
Romero
Morrow
Cecil
Alvarez
McGowan
Santos
Frasor
Janssen
Cordero
Oliver
Perez
Villanueva
That's probably pretty bang-on. I still think Thames and Snider is up in the air to an extent (it's Thames' job to lose, for sure), but there's lots of time for that to play out one way or the other. If the season started today, that's most definitely the line-up.
Re: Toronto Blue Jays 2012 Season Thread
