Cabrera signs with Cincinnati.

and watch Shield’s reaction when he surrendered a ground ball up the middle. Shields simply puts his head down and calmly walks off the mound to grab the rosin bag. He doesn’t worry about the play. He doesn’t watch the ball. He pays absolutely no mind to the impending out. He has already moved on and is readying himself for the next batter, and the ball has barely gotten past the mound. It was all there in the camera view.

Why was this important? Because OCab was playing defense behind him. Shields was so confident in OCab, so sure of the automatic out, that it never occured to him that thre was any possibility of anything going awry. You don’t gain that level of trust in your teammates, you don’t impart that level of expectations on your pitcher, without demonstrating empirically and over a long period of time that you are worthy.

It was the opinion of a fellow player that stood out for me. It was almost comically clear in Shields’ behavior. Nearly insulting to the opposing batter. It summed up what I had been witnessing better than any stats I could locate.