Sometimes there's a convergence but yesterday's 9th was a lack of intelligence. The bases were loaded with no outs and a pitcher who was wild. We needed a smart at-bat there and that's something Desmond doesn't do. The walk was the smart play because a walk would tie the game and bases would still be loaded, no outs. Desmond never takes the smart path in situations like that. The objective should have been to extend the game by the easiest path. But he didn't think of all of that. He swung, repeatedly, at balls. Josh Willingham or Nick Johnson would have taken the walk.
Nyjer Morgan was the poster child for lack of baseball intelligence.
Some of it is thinking between pitches, the way Kevin Costner does in "Bull Durham". Something that Desmond seems not to do, as PC mentions.
Some of it is understanding the right move while a play unfolds. That's partly practice so that you "see" the right play and do it without stopping to calculate. Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor, discussed this (in a book with his brother...can't remember the brother's name) on artificial intelligence. Dreyfus points to the way a chess master looks at a board and automatically "sees" a set of moves. The chess master might stop to think out several alternatives, but they can play a dozen simultaneous games against people like us because they "know" a lot more without having to think everything through.
Desmond blunders often, especially on offense. SS defense is a little more react-move-catch-throw...he has to position himself based on the batter, the runner, on the count, and on what pitch is being called, but once the hitter makes contact, the SS will execute the obvious play. Get to the ball and throw the runner out.
Players can make dumb fielding plays, but usually that's an OF, who often has more happening as fields a base-hit. Pence and Werth both positioned themselves to add power to their throws home on plays late in this game. Both had a fair chance to get the runnewr at the plate...the Nats runner held, and the Phillies runner, in the 9th, made it by about a step. By contrast, I was at Shea one night when Strawberry made a perfect no-hop throw to the catcher with no hope of getting the runner...allowing the hitter to take second.
That's baseball-dumb.
