Many reasons: writers like hustle and trying, and you can't write a story without saying Pierre hustles and tries hard while Ramirez doesn't writers like picking on the "new" baseball where homeruns are big deals, and they really like guys who just put the ball in play writers like the bunt and stolen base and think of them as lost arts pierre played on a WS winner, and Ramirez has played for the Cubs and Pirates. If there's one things writers will fall back on more than anything else, it's the notion that players are winners or losers depending on which teams they've played on. None of those reasons account for the real, primary reason: Ramirez is a run prodcuer and Pierre is not. When Lee went down with injury, Ramirez (and nobody else really) was expected to pick up the slack as the primary run prodcuer, which he didn't. I'm not justifying the argument either way, that's just my view on the their reasoning. It's really frickin hard to produce runs when no one is on base in front of you and no one who can hit his weight is batting behind you. During his slide Aramis wasn't given anything to hit. Instead of being paitent he expanded his zone and started swinging at pitches he shouldn't. Even so, IIRC he had around career norms for walks. Aramis was a victim of circumstances, not the cause of them.