I wrote about the Francisco Cervelli injury the other day, and both in the comments section of the post, and on other Yankee blogs I've seen quite a few people fall on the opposite side of the argument. Here is the video of the collision.



It looks like a clean play to me with an unfortunate outcome. Does the video change what you think about the play? Does it even matter to you that the play was technically clean?

UPDATE: It looks like YouTube took the video down, go here to see it. Hat tip to the guys who put the video up originally, NYY Stadium Insider.







[March 10, 2008 11:28 AM]  |  link  |  reply
Mike said

I'm not sure what Girardi is talking about. I think it would be questionable if Carl Crawford slammed into Jorge Posada. Elliot Johnson was trying to impress at camp.

[March 10, 2008 12:53 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Brian replied to Mike

Again, if Girardi doesn't want his catchers absorbing collisions, then he has to tell them not to block the plate in Spring Training. I don't think he should, but telling the other team that they have to follow certain rules is ridiculous.

[March 10, 2008 12:46 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Erin said

I think it was clean, but at the 0:56 mark of that video, do you hear some guy yell, "It's spring training, guys"? Apparently the play was unpopular right from the beginning.

[March 10, 2008 12:52 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Brian replied to Erin

Yep, a lot of people are taking exception to this. I think for some of them it's just a case of being on the wrong side of an injury.

[March 10, 2008 4:16 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Mike said

Its fine for a regular season game, but this is spring training. The video quality makes it hard, but it does seem the outside of the plate is open and the catcher was not high up the line blocking the whole plate.

It also seems the runner moves to his left slighty to hit the catcher dead on.

[March 10, 2008 7:18 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Ross (NYYStadiumInsider.com) said

Looks like the video that I captured was removed from youtube.com

If you want to check it out, please go here.

[March 10, 2008 10:58 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Brian replied to Ross (NYYStadiumInsider.com)

Thanks Ross. I put the link in the post as well.