bigcat22 said:
Not to be a downer, but I'm not sure Odor's slam today was a good thing for him. Spring Training is when most pitchers work on throwing a lot of fastballs and hitting spots, not so much on the chess match of each specific at bat. Similarly, a lot of hitters use this time to work on different things, like driving the ball to the opposite side of the field. I'm worried that if Odor is just going to be sitting on fastball and trying to go
yard every at bat in spring training, he will get overly confident and that approach will carry over to the season and have similar results to last season. Obviously it's early, but just my $.02.
If you've followed the rangers consistently over the last five years, you'd know that Odor is probably one of the best performing players in MLB every single spring.
The thing I've noticed about Odor is that he crushes bad pitchers, but he really struggles against decent to good ones. His numbers against the Astros the last few years are non existent.
I wouldn't celebrate anything Odor does this spring or anything Joey gallo, Santana, or Calhoun does either. The spring is all about " getting ready" for those guys. How they do in the next 25 days or so doesn't really matter at all. They will all be on the roster and starting opening day anyways. A lot of their hits will be off guys who will be sacking groceries or fixing cars by late March.
Spring training results only matter for pitchers and hitters trying to make the team or the young / up and coming guys further down in the minor league system.