Have you read a single one of my posts? I'm wondering if any teams give hard take signs in MLB at all and if so, how common it is. I'm not even talking about Williams except to wonder if this is completely the norm at the MLB level.
And MY point is that if your players are so stupid they need a hard take sign to take a pitch in a situation where that's clearly the decision they should make, then give them the hard take.
I don't give a crap what the norm is in baseball. You can argue that baseball players should be smart enough to do EVERYTHING by themselves. They've been playing the game for 20 years, why can't they steal themselves, position themselves defensively, call pitch outs, bunts, etc?
But if they are NOT, then it's the manager's job with his coaching staff to optimize their decisionmaking so they're not costing the team runs.
Furthermore, Williams admitted that his guys don't have a hard take on 3-0, they have the discretion to swing away, pretty much throughout the lineup. So if you give your players that discretion, then you HAVE to issue a hard take in a scenario you know requires a hard take, to eliminate the possibility of a swing.
Your position seems to be that if a guy gets a perfect pitch, maybe it's a good play to swing. And I think you're probably right in some scenarios. But in THIS specific scenario, I wonder what the BABIP would have to be to make it a decent play. I bet well over .500, and I'm not sure Yunel Escobar would ever reach that on any pitch (and of course we know what the result was).
