What can I bring to the table as 2006 Pirates manager? A new out-of-the-box playbook. Designed to sell tickets and teach some of these damn kids a lesson that they need to execute the fundamentals they've been taught ... or face Wiggy.
Page 1 is the new defensive play "the reverse Wiggy wheel". In this one, Wiggy plays first. Upon contact, the whole infield sprints into clockwise rotation. P covers 3B, 3B covers SS, SS covers 2B, 2B covers 1B. This frees Wiggy up for a full-speed head-on collision with the unsuspecting baserunner.
This doesn't work for walks or homers. So page 2: say Kip just got cute with his sixth walk of the game or Mesa just grooved a fastball. Of course, the game is now beyond reach and the pitcher needs a sharp correction. I signal for the "Wiggy hook". In this one, Doumit lofts the ball back to the mound, but about a third of the way towards third. Kip/Joe/whoever jogs off the mound to shag the errant throw. Wiggy sprints off third, seemingly also shagging said errant throw. But of course, he never slows down, overruns it and does what he does best. Page 3 is a variant of this one where Wiggy gets shifted to LF after Tike botches a play in CF. Fogg comes in to serve up fly balls and Wiggy does his thing. Page 4 is "Wrong-way Wiggy". This one gets prescribed after egregious baserunning blunders. Next time offender gets on base behind somebody else, lead baserunner is replaced with Wiggy. You can guess what comes next.
We might not win many games, but that hasn't been the goal in awhile, right? More importantly, I think all these puerile shenanigans would sell tickets, and make a LOT of money for Mr. Nutting.
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