The Ever Declining Defense Of Jorge

Here's the complete item from the LoHud Yankees Blog:

The last interesting nugget from the postgame was Burnett's reluctance to discuss his wild pitches. Burnett reached a career-high 17 with three today, and he quickly said "I don't want to discuss wild pitches" when asked about them. Of course, one was pivotal because he scored the tying run in the sixth.

The reason A.J. doesn't want to talk about all the wild pitches is that the vast majority of them should have never happened. Jorge Posada is quite possibly the worst defensive catcher in the league at this point. I'm not just talking about his throwing, which is pitiful, I'm talking about the physical and mental aspect of catching. He botches balls that reach him on the fly, he almost never moves his body to block pitches, he stabs at balls in the dirt with his glove, he's extremely, extremely lazy behind the plate. It has already cost this team games (one in LA when two batters reached base on dropped third strikes in the same inning comes to mind), and it will continue to cost this team games.

The sad part about it is that I don't believe this is a physical thing. Blocking pitches is almost 100% mental. You expect the pitch to be in the dirt and you give your body up to keep it in front of you. That's basically all there is to it. You have to be willing to do the work and know the technique, which he surely does. Someone needs to address this with Posada, and they need to do it quickly. The passed balls and wild pitches are only the problems you can see. What won't make its way into the box score is the loss of confidence the pitching staff has in him. The next time you see a pitcher hang a slider with an 0-2 count and a man on third I want you to think back to this post. If a pitcher doesn't have confidence that his catcher will keep the ball in front of him, he's going to make too good of a pitch. He's going to be afraid to give up a free run. That's dangerous, and it may already be happening.

I think AJ Burnett is pissed that Jorge is lazy behind the dish, and you know what? He has every right to be.