June 24, 2012

BP Unfiltered

Slade Heathcott, Film Critic

by Ben Lindbergh

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Slade Heathcott was the Yankees' first-round pick in the 2009 draft. He's had trouble staying healthy since then, but he has plenty of talent: even though he'd played in only 129 minor-league games before the start of this season, Kevin Goldstein ranked him as the Yankees' 13th-best prospect. Kevin called him an "extreme athlete" who "remains raw."

Often, a raw prospect has trouble distinguishing between pitch types, since he hasn't seen enough of each kind to tell them apart. Until he gets enough reps to start recognizing them early, he'll swing at pitches he thought looked like fastballs, only to discover too late that they were sliders all along. Heathcott has a similar problem: he can't identify the genre a film belongs to until after he's bought a ticket.

Rock of Ages doesn't try very hard to hide the fact that it's a musical. In fact, this image appears exactly 12 seconds into the official trailer:

After which a whole lot of actors and actresses start dancing and singing, much as they might in, well, a musical. Some people find it hard to see a movie without having major plot points spoiled. They should try to live a little more like Slade Heathcott.

Heathcott just finished his rehab from shoulder surgery with the Gulf Coast League Yankees and should join High-A Tampa shortly. We wish him well and hope his health problems are behind him. The more game action he sees, the better he'll be at baseball, and the more movies he sees, the better he'll be at knowing what sort of movie he's seeing.

Here are Heathcott's takes on some other popular films playing in theaters near you:

Marvel's The Avengers is awful.
OK it wasn't too bad, just wasn't expecting all that comic book crap.

The Cabin in the Woods is awful.
OK it wasn't too bad, just wasn't expecting a horror film.

The Three Stooges is awful.
OK it wasn't too bad, just wasn't expecting so much slapstick.

Battleship is awful.
 OK it wasn't too bad, just wasn't expecting a movie about battleships. 

Ben Lindbergh is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @benlindbergh
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