A
baseball team’s bench and bullpen are inexplicably and intrinsically linked.
Backup position players and (in essence) backup pitchers. In many people’s brains,
the bench and bullpen are mere afterthoughts. In reality, though, they play a large part
in the fortunes of baseball teams.
Hell,
even when a manager throws in the towel and calls on a position player to pitch
an inning of mop-up duty during particularly terrible blowouts, he usually
calls on a bench player (Jose Canseco notwithstanding)
to ply his new trade and float batting-practice-perfected knuckleballs at
seasoned major league hitters.
A
major league baseball team’s bench is a motley crew of three to five not-quite-everyday-players
that spend most of the season seated on – you guessed it – the bench, just
waiting for a slow runner to get on base late in the game, or for an everyday
player to require a sporadic day off.
We’re
motoring towards the end of Spring Training, so as of this point, the 2014 Blue
Jays version of The Bench is looking as such:
- Back-up catcher (RA Dickey’s best
friend Eric Kratz)
- Back-up infielder (the Blue Jays $3-million
man Maicer Izturis)
- Back-up outfielder (out-of-options
Moises Sierra)
