Carlos Delgado: One Smart Dude

On Sunday, Carlos Delgado of the New York Mets hit a home run off a Milwaukee Brewer's pitcher to put the Mets up for good.

What was really interesting about that at-bat is that on the pitch before the one that he socked for his home run, Carlos swung and missed terribly on a curve ball.

Willy Randolph later told reporters that he was pretty sure that Carlos missed that badly in order to set the pitcher up for the next pitch.

When asked about this, Carlos denied it, but the tone in which he denied it left many reporters believing that Carlos was just trying to protect his secrets. It was a *wink wink* type of denial.

Isn't that amazing? You know that pitchers spend their nights dreaming about how they are going to work the batters that they have to face the next day.

High and in followed by down and away.

Two quick strikes right on the outside of the plate and then one slightly further out to try to make the batter chase.

With two strikes, a high fastball so that the batter can see the pitch and will want to swing at it but has no way of catching up to it.

The scenarios are endless.

Now how about a batter purposely swing and missing on a pitch to make the pitcher think that it's a pitch that he can get away with again?

Those who use their heads like Carlos Delagado can really make the game a lot of fun for us fans, can't they?

- Joshua
InsideTheYankees.com