There's a thing about hitting in the three spot in a batting order.That's the spot that, typcially, is for the teams overall best hitter. The hitter with the best combination of power, hitting for average and sometimes some speed. In the 2008 season, Josh personified the three hole: .304 average, 32 bombs and an ops of .901.
So just look at other three hitters in the bigs. There's Chase Utley, Hanley Ramirez, Mark Teixeira and of course Albert Pujols. The guy hitting behind Tex, I believe his nickname is A-Rod, was also a pretty good three hitter around these parts some years ago.
My point is, the three spot is usually reserved for the franchise guy (or one of them). So, how many franchise guys do you know get benched after two games? Yeah. For as much as A-Rod struggled in the first weeks in April around here, he was never sat down or benched. You just don't do that, that is, if you HAVE a franchise player to play there.
I know this is just overreaction to Josh's awful start (0 for 7 with 4 K's) but how bad is it when you replace one of your 'franchise guys' because of the lefty match-up with...another lefty. Excuse me if I'm wrong, but David Murphy hit .234 against lefties last year. And .258 the year before. Yeah, getting Murphy in the lineup really screams situational hitting.
For all I know, this is a pretty mindless rant. For all I know, J-Ham will go nutzo for the next month, and we can just have a laugh about this incredibly, incredibly small mini-micro slump. I hope he does.
If he's a franchise player, he will.
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