Mike Napoli wanted more playing time and he is about to get it, though I don’t think he intended for his best friend to break his wrist in order for it to happen (or did he?). No matter how it happened, Napoli got what he wished for and now it is on him to put his bat and glove where his mouth his.
You’ve got our attention now, Naps. It is on you to keep it there.
In the seemingly never-ending battle for time at catcher, many sensed that this would be the year that either Mike Napoli or Jeff Mathis finally separated themselves from the other to secure the starting job on a permanent basis. Most everyone, myself included, would have bet their house on Napoli being the one to emerge from the fray as the top backstop. Good thing we didn’t place those bets because we would have all been homeless up until Monday night. Much to the chagrin of statheads and fantasy baseball players, it was Jeff Mathis who ended up convincing Mike Scioscia to give him the lion’s share of playing time behind the plate, not Napoli and his mighty bat who unexpectedly wound up in Scioscia’s doghouse due to his continued defensive struggles.
If not for Mathis breaking his wrist this week, Naps would probably still be stuck in the doghouse munching on kibble waiting for a chance to prove himself once again. Sosh had taken a hard line with him that he won’t get to play much until his defense improved and was sticking to that mandate. But now that Scioscia has no other choice (even Sosh isn’t crazy enough to throw Bobby Wilson out there everyday right now), it is on Napoli to see to it that he doesn’t end up back on pine-riding duty once Mathis heals up six-to-eight weeks from now.
One can only hope that this protracted little benching Napoli was hit with to start the season knocked some sense into him. It seems to me that Napoli very much became a guy who bought into his own hype too much. For the last two years, statheads and fans alike have pondered longingly on the day that Mike finally got a full-time starting gig so they could see just how much damage he really could do at the plate with his big power stroke. Could he really be a 30-homer catcher? The mind boggled at the Halos having such an offensive gem at a position not known for offensive production. We all saw what he could during his brief stint as an everyday player when the Angels temporarily installed him at DH for a stretch. When he posted that eye-popping 1.032 OPS, it was pretty much the end for him. We saw what his bat could do and wanted more, so much more. The problem was that so did Mike.
It was right around that time that Napoli’s defense really started going to the dogs. This time he had no convenient excuse like the bad shoulder that hampered him earlier in his career, he just got lazy. Lazy definitely does not play when you are catching for the great and mighty Mike Scioscia. For any other manager, Naps probably could have continued to get away with his sloppy fundamentals on defense, but not Sosh, not when his very reputation as a player was predicated on his defensive prowess. To treat the position with such disregard is like committing a mortal sin in Scioscia’s eyes and Napoli still has yet to fully repent.
Instead of an act of contrition or a new found dedication to defense that got Napoli back in the line-up, but sometimes fate intervenes. Naps had been working hard on improving his backstop work, but he still had a long way to go as far as his manager was concerned. But now Napoli is going to have make his improvements on the fly instead of just in practice with Scioscia scrutinizing him every step of the way. No matter what he does at the plate, Napoli is effectively going up against a ticking clock that will go off once Jeff Mathis is activated from disabled list in about two months. By then, either Napoli’s defense will be good enough or it won’t. And if it isn’t, Napoli might better make sure that he reserves a nice comfy spot on the bench because he is going to be there for a very long time.
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