Napoli batting eighth? Great move!
Texas Rangers' Mike Napoli hits a three-run home run during the sixth inning of Game 4. (Oct. 23, 2011) Credit: AP
To the legions of folks who wondered, justifiably, "Mike Napoli eighth?!" the Texas Rangers and crazy-like-a-fox manager Ron Washington offered a simple response Sunday night in World Series Game 4:
Yes. Mike Napoli eighth.
Mike Napoli hitting eighth, to break up lefties David Murphy (seventh) and Mitch Moreland (ninth).
Mike Napoli eighth, so he'd be in position to deliver the biggest hit of the contest.
Mike Napoli eighth, spreading smiles throughout the baseball landscape as a trip back to St. Louis and a sixth game have been assured.
Napoli, one of the best trade acquisitions by any team last offseason, swung at the first pitch thrown by a Cardinals reliever and punished it, crushing Mitchell Boggs' high fastball into the leftfield stands for a game-changing three-run homer in the sixth inning.
A short while later, the Rangers had a 4-0 victory behind a stellar mound outing by Derek Holland -- pitching to catcher Napoli -- to tie this Fall Classic at two games apiece.
"It doesn't matter to me, as long as I'm playing," Napoli said of his place in the batting order. "I'm going to take the same approach as I do if I'm hitting seventh or sixth."
"I was breaking up the lefties," Washington said, reiterating his pregame explanation, "and, you know, hopefully, if Mike was hitting in the seventh spot, where I probably would have had him, the same thing may have happened. But I was just breaking up my lefties."
Let's not be polite: Hitting Napoli eighth is, by any rational measure, wacky. Always a capable hitter on the Angels but never a good enough catcher to satisfy manager Mike Scioscia, Napoli came to Texas through Toronto and exploded this season with a .414 on-base percentage and .631 slugging percentage in 432 plate appearances.
Does the righty-hitting Napoli struggle against righthanded pitchers? Well, he put up a .407 OBP and .637 SLG in 297 plate appearances against righties in the regular season. In past matchups with Cardinals righthander Edwin Jackson, Napoli was 1-for-9 with four strikeouts, so that's something. It's a pretty tiny sample size, though, and besides, we know that St. Louis manager Tony La Russa doesn't hesitate to turn to his bullpen.
Had Napoli been cold in the postseason? He hadn't produced as well as he did in the regular season. However, you can't complain about his .365 OBP and .444 SLG for the postseason entering Sunday night's game.
No, it appears that Washington had no secret agenda. Washington used Napoli, one of the major leagues' best hitters of 2011, as a stylistic changeup. Napoli was the piece of cheese between the roast beef and the turkey on your hoagie.
And yet the game found the cheese. With the Cardinals trailing 1-0 and one out in the sixth, Jackson walked Nelson Cruz and Murphy, and after a pickoff attempt and a mound meeting to stall, La Russa called on Boggs.
One pitch later, the game essentially had ended. "I was looking for something up and kind of had an idea they were probably going to try to pound me in," Napoli said, "and I just got a pitch up that I could handle."
Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated wrote last year of baseball manager moves: "If they work, they work. That's all. Everything else is static."
Therefore, Washington's lineup worked.
The lineup started out looking pathetic, and Washington wound up seeming prophetic. What surprises will this exciting series serve up in Game 5?
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