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2012 MLB Catch All thread


southsider2k5

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At Major League Baseball's draft Monday will be five players: Carlos Correa, Andrew Heaney, Gavin Cecchini, Courtney Hawkins and Clint Coulter. Unless you are a nerd, you have not heard of any of them.

 

You have not heard of any of them because baseball is not like football or basketball. Its best amateurs don't feed directly into their professional equivalent. The best baseball players spend at least a year in the minor leagues. Most take three, four, five years of seasoning, sometimes more. Baseball treats its prospects like wine while basketball and football are tequila and Jager.

 

Bud Selig will start the first-round festivities at 7 p.m. ET. (Getty Images)Baseball, of course, wants to have its alcohol and drink it, too, by televising a draft that is hours of soul-numbing viewing. The entertainment quotient is restricted to prospect hounds and those who tune in to see Bud Selig pronounce the Dodgers' hometown as Los Angeleeze.

 

When MLB first decided to televise the draft, it seemed like a decent enough idea. Personalize it, build slowly and within a few years players would want to attend it in New York. Only it hasn't worked that way because baseball hasn't done the requisite work to make those players interesting.

 

MLB owns a television network. This is a very powerful medium. This gives the league the opportunity to broadcast a game or two of the best high school players in the country. This allows the sport a chance to scope out college players and promote them so they're not just a first name and a last name come draft day. There is no intrigue if there is no emotion, and there is no emotion if there's no connection, and there's no connection if there's no conduit – and with no intrigue, emotion or connection, it's like a TV series with characters nobody cares about – the sort that gets canceled.

 

The exception comes when baseball happens upon a grassroots superstar. For the draft's first two televised years, it had one: Stephen Strasburg in 2009 and Bryce Harper in 2010. Last year, when Gerrit Cole went No. 1 and everyone after him was nothing more than a local story, nobody cared. Same for this year.

 

Correa is a dark horse to go No. 1 overall to the Houston Astros. He is a household name – in his own house. Hawkins and Heaney might be top 10 picks. The others are first-round talents. Not there: Mark Appel, Byron Buxton, Kyle Zimmer, Kevin Gausman, Mike Zunino, who could comprise the first five picks in some order.

 

The sport treats the draft with an if-you-build-it-they-will-come mentality. That's backward. Baseball needs first to build the idea of its amateur product as something more than a D-list sport. This will take years and patience and money – all of which will pay off with more fans following the sport. The NFL and NBA drafts are only as good as their college programs that earn billions of dollars a year in television money. High school and college baseball earn billions of pennies a decade.

 

Until baseball changes that, they might as well go back to the old format – a conference call – because they shouldn't have to rely on those like …

 

1. Bryce Harper to single-handedly carry the interest. Though, come to think of it, he is quite well-equipped to do so, something he affirms more every day he spends in the major leagues.

 

It is easy to forget Harper is 19 because he is so good. His OPS now sits at .922 after his fifth homer Sunday, one of 16 extra-base hits in 118 at-bats. Among those with at least 125 plate appearances, only 26 players have a better slugging percentage than his .542. Just 30 contemporaries beat his .380 on-base percentage.

 

And while the small-sample-size police ticketed me on Twitter for leaping onto my jump-to-conclusions mat, I did so – and do so – with no shame. Harper is a star already, a bona fide prodigy who is doing things we haven't seen since, what, Mel Ott, who only put up the greatest teenage season ever in 1928. The closest in modern history is Ken Griffey Jr., who at 19 went .287/.356/.434 in his first 136 plate appearances.

 

Maybe Harper keeps this up. Maybe he doesn't. Either way, any time a player so transfixes the sport with his talent, it's a blessing for fans. And to have two of them at once, with …

 

 

Mike Trout2. Mike Trout doing his best Junior impersonation. No, they're not all that similar. Griffey had more raw power. Trout's blessed with great speed. But Trout is getting on base at a .374 clip and slugging .538. Junior's lifetime OBP and SLG numbers: .370 and .538.

 

Trout and Harper simultaneously generate excitement in different leagues, on different coasts, from different sides of the plate – and with similar styles of play. In short: aggressive. Harper stealing home was impressive. Trout beating a Nelson Cruz rocket throw from right field on a tag-up Saturday night was almost equally so. They're both fun. They're both exciting.

 

Still, when someone on Twitter asked who I'd rather see in the All-Star game, I didn't hesitate: Harper. The allure of his power, the doesn't-give-a-damn vibe he gives off, the feeling that this is someone with a chance to make a historic impact. – it's intoxicating. And while I'd take Trout over pretty much anyone else in baseball, with a few exceptions, he's still not Harper. Whether …

 

 

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/10-degrees--a...ateur-hour.html

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QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 10:01 AM)
Jon Morosi ‏@jonmorosi

 

Andre Ethier, Carlos Gonzalez and Nelson Cruz would be arguably the best outfield in baseball. Too bad the A’s traded them all.

 

BUT MONEYBALL!

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QUOTE (chw42 @ Jun 12, 2012 -> 11:15 AM)
Seems like a bit of an overpay...

 

Ethier just doesn't seem like an $18 million player. $12 million sounds about right.

I expected to check the numbers and be able to say Ethier was better...but you know what, you're right. Baseball reference has him being regularly a 2 WAR player. Fangraphs has him being a 2-3 WAR player, worth...$10 mil to up to $15 a year.

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DKnobler ‏@DKnobler

 

Talked to yet another scout who sent a negative report on Youkilis: "He looks terrible. Can't get to a fastball."

 

Tim Britton ‏@TBritton_Projo

 

Valentine said Youkilis will have his ribs examined more closely by the Miami team doctors. "He's rotationally restricted."

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QUOTE (fathom @ Jun 7, 2012 -> 03:39 AM)
Jim Thome facing Kenley Jansen = the most likely strikeout scenario I've seen in a very long time. I feel bad for Thome, he really should have retired this last offseason.

 

Thome 10-19 since I posted this :)

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