Originally posted by Birddog20, Louisville Sluggers GM
Louisville Courier-Journal
June 21, 1995
Ernie Ford sparks 9-1 sim
Local media questioned the demotion of ROY candidate
Howard Domagal. After all he was coming off a solid month of May which saw him hit .340 and earn Rookie of the Month honors.
If the Sluggers could have kept him up, they would have ... but Louisville has been struggling with defense in the field. BAPIP is at an historic high and that's not a good thing after being tops last year. Part of that seems to be their lack of range at 3b where
David Smurf has been playing in order to make room from Domagal's bat. Well, it's not that Smurf is bad, in fact he has 10 range out of 20 ... so he's actually pretty average there. But by bringing up
Ernie Ford, Louisville can slide him in at 2b (14rng), move
Kenare Sobah to SS (16rng), move
Wings Hauser to 3B (20rng) while Smurf rolls to 1b (20rng). This alignment isn't so strong up the middle as we have 16 and 14 there instead of 18 and 19, but overall, it's much more rangy especially on the left side of the infield where Hauser sucks everthing up like a vacuum cleaner.
Offensively, Ford is capable of hitting as good as Domagal, but he has a much better eye. Ernie takes over at leadoff and should be very productive with his great basestealing ability. Already in 8 games, Ford is hitting .382avg .447obp .676slg 1.124ops with 4 steals.
Defensively, the change was duly noted as Louisville went on a 8-1 streak highlighted by 4 straight games in which they gave up no more than 1 run. For the 9 game stretch, the pitching staff which had been the worse in the league gave up only 21 runs.
Perhaps the BAPIP gods will shine on us once again.