Colby Lewis is furious at Colby Rasmus for bunting
By Hayden Kane
To hear Colby Lewis of the Texas Rangers tell it, the two-run lead enjoyed by the Toronto Blue Jays in the middle of the game on Saturday amounted to an insurmountable double digit lead. It was a big enough lead, in the opinion of Lewis, that bunting for a hit was not an acceptable tactic.
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In a sport full of pathetic complaints, Lewis has levied one of the most pathetic complaints of all. He claims that Colby Rasmus was not playing the game the right way when he bunted for a hit against an infield shift with his team up two runs.
Seriously. This is a thing. Lewis had the following to say (courtesy of MLB.com):
"“I told [Rasmus] I didn’t appreciate it,” Lewis said. “You’re up by two runs with two outs and you lay down a bunt. I don’t think that’s the way the game should be played.”"
I’m a little bit concerned about Lewis’s ability, as a baseball player, to count. How many runs does he think is two runs? And this happened in the 5th inning. The 5th! Is he kidding? More from his nonsensical complaints:
"“I felt like you have a situation where there is two outs, you’re up two runs, you have gotten a hit earlier in the game off me, we are playing the shift, and he laid down a bunt basically simply for average,” Lewis said……”[Rasmus] didn’t steal within the first two pitches to put himself in scoring position,” Lewis said. “That tells me he is solely looking out for himself, and looking out for batting average. And I didn’t appreciate it.”"
Oh?
Rasmus is a career .246 hitter who is batting .217 this season with 75 strikeouts. Let’s just say that I don’t think padding his batting average is high on his priority list. But apparently Lewis thinks he should go up there, swing away, and preserve Texas’s chance to get a runner on and tie the game.
This is the purest form of nonsense in a sport that is, sadly, full of nonsense.