By SwingCompleto
Although many continue to confuse the terms, the fact that you are a great hitter does not mean that as a player you have the same category, or at least your offensive results lead you to completely overcome men who have been able to exploit their five tools with stars. results with the bat and glove.
That is why even with his critics, Yuli Gurriel is without question one of the most complete players that Cuban baseball has given, demonstrating it inside and outside his country, with very high parameters in the vast majority of statistical and physical aspects.
While Gurriel’s metrics around his strength, touch and defense while playing in Cuba reached levels of excellence, speed has also been a tool that contributed considerably to his training as a five-star player.
And it’s not about running for running, but about the increasingly disappearing ability of Cuban and even international baseball to steal bases, a statistic in which the Spaniard achieved a formidable result. So good was he, that his effectiveness in this regard placed him no less than second of all time above legendary robbers such as Enrique Díaz, Víctor Mesa and Eduardo Paret.
According to the analysis of one of the most professional statisticians of the moment, Yasser Vázquez from Santiago, the member of the Houston Astros is only surpassed by Antonio “Ñico” Jiménez from Havana in robbery frequency among all those who accumulate 150 or more attempts in National Series.
Jiménez, a gardener who was part of the teams in the Cuban capital in the sixties achieved a 75.1% success rate thanks to his 325 scams and 108 caught stealing in his 13 seasons of acting. And Yulieski automatically comes, with an impressive 74.6% (153 BR-52 CR), leaving Ramón Gómez Pedroso third with 73.7% (115-41).
It is worth noting that here not only the speed in question intervenes, but other factors such as mischief to catch the time of the pitcher properly. Even much less agile runners like Alexander Malleta have had this last aspect well mastered to take advantage of in certain moments of the game.
The lifetime leader in total stolen bases, Havana second baseman Enriquito Díaz, is eighth with 72.1%, while Víctor Mesa, historical sub-leader in this aspect, is eleventh in terms of frequency (71.1%).
Another of the players classified as out of series due to his offensive-defensive integrity has been the third baseman from Pinar del Río Omar Linares, who managed to include himself in the top ten with a 72.1% that places him just behind Enrique.
Despite the fact that the trend to steal bases has continued to decline within baseball, especially Cuban baseball, the list of the top ten in frequency of scams includes two that are still active, such as Granma outfielder Roel Santos and third baseman. from Matanzas Yurisbel Gracial.
The only season with negative numbers for Gurriel in the BR-CR relationship was in 2005-06 when he only got safe on one occasion of the six times he went out to the robbery. His personal record in terms of total was in 2011-2012 with 14, in a year that he was barely pulled out four times. Even in his final goodbye to Cuban baseball in 2016, in the same contest that finished with an absolute record in offensive average with 500, although he tried fewer times to take over the next pad on his own, he was unharmed on the three occasions he looked for it.
In the Major Leagues, he has a favorable aggregate of 15-9 since his debut and to date, and if he has not kept up with Cuba it is due to elements such as his age that has made him slow down a bit, and above all, the Your club’s own indications about your goals in the ball game. Similarly, only in 2020 had a negative balance in terms of stolen bases per total attempts.
Undoubtedly the controversial, but no less stellar player who this year experiences an excellent campaign despite his 37 years once again demonstrates with statistics that when it is said that Yuli Gurriel has been a great playerIt’s not done just looking at average, home runs and RBIs. If to those parameters in which he showed brilliance within the Cuban ball we add his success as a robber of bases, then there are fewer arguments for his staunch detractors when it comes to subtracting his merits as one of the best players that Cuba has given.