SS Productions(me ;) GWRBI 10/30 10th inning right behind Reds Dugout
When Jay Bruce arrived a few years ago and lit up baseball and GABP with his chicken bump causing start, we all were ecstatic. 2 years later, lots of patience, 2 previous seasons at sub .260, we all had been waiting. He broke out nicely this year and then had a terribly slow July, once again dropping his average down to the marginal performance line: 250'ish w/occasional big hits. Not that a team cant win with that, especially since we did, and especially since he has one of the top guns in MLB. A friend of mine speculated something during his July "slump" which I easily gravitated towards: was he really in a slump or was that .250'ish Jay Bruce the real thing? It was a fair question, one that got me lambasted for asking it on twitter.
Except for 2 months of .270-300 type mashing we had not seen him do it over a full year, so there was a lot to prove. Let me be the first to say IM GLAD I WAS WRONG! I WANTED TO BE WRONG! lol... But the evidence proven by team winning-big hitting-contributing offense had not been there. As Bruce hits now once again in the .275'ish zone its something else to see, him coming into his own. For the record I never called for his ousting, or benching, just that besides his incredible D we needed his stick!
A few weeks ago I was at GABP to witness his HR Trifecta. Two nights later the Night before the Cuban Missile Attack he hits a walk-off single. Evidenced here by "pie in face": http://bit.ly/ds3zKZ. Then he takes a little sabbatical, comes back and hits two dingers in his comeback game: Thats the Bruuuuuuuuuce we saw come into the league 3 years ago, and the one we have been waiting on. Now with his D (evidenced by CoCo saving grabs like this:http://bit.ly/df7SHt ) which is Gold Glove worthy, hitting .275 with power is quite acceptable ;) We never doubted your ability Bruce, its just that we had not seen it over the long haul! And its a beautiful thing to behold!
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