Matt Stairs on Travis Snider

Yesterday, on MLB Radio on XM, I listening to Matt Stairs, and yep, he said that Cito didn't like Travis Snider. I think that most of us knew that Travis wasn't Cito's favorite player.

Stairs also said that Travis had the best opposite field power of any player he's seen. I don't know how he ranks things like that, but maybe that was part of the problem that Cito had with Travis. Cito does like guys to pull the ball. If you have read Shawn Green's book, you'll know that pulling pitches was a point of contention between the two of them. Shawn felt that he was better off to go with the pitch, Cito preferred him to pull everything. That was also a cause of trouble between Cito and John Olerud. Cito felt that he should pull the ball more.

Likely Ctio would say that he didn't want batters to pull everything, but that he wanted batters to recognize pitches they could pull, and then do it. Or to wait for pitches they could pull. And that's fair. A lot of players have found success by listening to Cito.

Stairs also thinks the Jays have messed around with Travis too much, that they should give him 550 at bats and let him run with it. I think Travis would likely need that many at bats to chase all the negative thoughts out of his head. I'm just not sure the Jays will ever do that.

Of course, Matt also said that Adam Lind was a good hitter against both right and left-handed pitching. So maybe we shouldn't listen to everything he says.