C - Bengie Molina - Team #3_The Fatal Flaw

I recall from some far off, long ago TV broadcast, hearing about how Bengie Molina was the slowest ever. Laughing, jocularity, surrounding the reliable World Series champ and his footspeed. A little research uncovered an article in the Hardball Times: "Run Slowly and Carry a Big Bat." Craig Burley writes " I suppose I have always known that Bengie Molina was slow." Exactly. We all know, through some trick of the collective unconscious, that this third of the Molina catchers is quicksand.

Bengie is a good ballplayer, renowned, even, for his catching skills. He's got a good bat, overlooking a few sabermetric short comings. But The Slow. Every ball that I've watched Molina put in play is coated with The Slow, because there is the question of the ball itself (a hit, a homer??) and then there is the question of the The Slow. A slow, slow dribbler down the line means one thing with an average runner, but with Molina it is like reading a long poem: a familiar language made the more interesting for a slightly altered vocabulary. The third baseman can hesitate for a hair longer and set his feet, unrushed. Molina's barely two-thirds of the way down.

(This is the flaw's role. It changes the rules when that player steps in.)

[Catchers get a bad rap for being slow (it's a bad rap but an accurate one, according to Burley's tabulations). When I was in high school, I enjoyed challenging middle infielders to on-the-spot sprint races. "To that fence post, Go!" I'd pace them if not beat them and notch a small victory for catchers. That was a good little trick until my junior year or so, when I got a little bigger and I guess slower, and the middle infielders got quicker. In youth, I could bend expectation, but as we neared maturity, the roles were solidified. That I could keep up, a lead-footed catcher, became a comical notion, a farce.]

Molina has stolen 3 bases in 10 years in the league. That is 12 seconds of the highest drama, when the farcical hits the e-break, locks up and spins the heads of all present.

stats, the bros., a tear in the space-time fabric

Lineup - The Fatal Flaw

C - Bengie Molina
1B -
2B -
3B -
SS -
LF -
CF -
RF -

SP -
RP -

Manager -