My five year old daughter likes Cracker Jack. What’s not to love — sugar-coated popcorn (she typically does not like peanuts) and a free prize. I like it because it’s cheap. Everybody wins! Still loving Cracker Jack all these years later.
I still love Bazooka Joe too. It gives your jaw a workout.
Is Tim Lincecum‘s baseball career over? Probably, but who knows?
I was wondering what Timmy has been up to today, but I can’t find any information since a February 23 mlbtraderumors.com post saying that he was planning a show case for scouts. After that, nothing. I don’t even know if the showcase happened, but I’d guess not.
Tim turns 33 in June, so he’s certainly at an age where retirement seems likely if his body isn’t healthy and pain free. He’s made plenty of money playing baseball, which may mean that he has no incentive to play in the minors again, unless he’s really burning to keep playing baseball simply because he enjoys it.
Tim wanted to continue being a starter, and his options there are few, although an Indy-A Atlantic League team would have snapped him up in a New York second and put him into the starting rotation if he were willing to play at this level.
If he was willing to pitch out of the bullpen, then I’d have to think at least one MLB organization would have signed him, if he were healthy enough to pitch.
It’s still early May, so we can’t completely write off Tim taking another stab at professional baseball. However, the silence is deafening and surely is not a good sign.
As of this moment, every team in the San Francisco Giants’ organization is in last place in its respective division in its respective league. The major league club is 11-18; the AAA Sacramento River Cats are 9-17; the AA Richmond Flying Squirrels are 9-14; the A+ San Jose Giants are 12-15; and the Class A Augusta GreenJackets are 10-16. Yeesh!
If the major league team doesn’t start to turn things around right quick, it would behoove the organization to be trade deadline sellers this year. Years as contenders and buyers has left the organization with what appears to be a major talent deficit. A new infusion of talent looks sorely needed.
I was wrong about the Giants giving Christian Arroyo at least another 15 games before promoting him to the Show. The Giants gave Arroyo two more games in which he went 5-for-9, and they wasted no time in calling him up.
Given the recent news out of San Francisco, promoting Arroyo this soon contains a whiff of desperation, as the team tries to shake things up a bit, and gives its first hint that the team already sees 2017 as a rebuilding year.
Current word is that Arroyo will be giving a chance to start at 3B, with Eduardo Nunez presumably moving to LF. I’m still a bit concerned with how little Arroyo walks, and if it had been up to me, I’d have left him at AAA Sacramento for that 15 or 16 games I’d previously written about.
Still, Arroyo is hot and can clearly hit, and we’ll see how long it takes before National League pitchers can figure out how to make him hit their pitch, since he isn’t yet disposed to take walks. NL pitchers might not figure that out until 2018.
The Baltimore Orioles made a flurry of moves today, mostly involving minor league pitchers and international draft slots. It seems clear that the Orioles are making a calculated gamble that the best 16 and 17 year old Latin American players aren’t worth the risk.
The O’s obtained Damien Magnifico from the Brewers and Paul Fry from the Mariners for respectively, the 15th overall international draft slot (worth $885,000) and the 105th international draft slot worth $198,000. Meanwhile, Baltimore designated Jason Garcia and Parker Bridwell for assignment and traded Oliver Drake to the Brewers for cash or the infamous player to be named later. Phew, that’s a busy day!
I suspect that, while the Magnifico and Drake deals were announced separatedly one day apart, they are closely connected.
Ben Badler criticized the Orioles yesterday for not spending more money on international players the last few years. The O’s have spent only $260,000 on five prospects in the 2016-2017 signing period, one of whom received $150,000. According to Badler, the most expensive Orioles international signing of the last three years is the mere $350,000 given to 3Bman Jomar Reyes, who at least looks like a good return on that money so far.
I have to agree with Badler: it might have made sense not to take a high risk, high reward strategy in recent years when signing bonuses were high for the best players, as at least five or six teams flouted the rules each signing period and elected to sign as many good players for as much money as it took in exchange for losing big money signings for the next year or two. But now that there is effectively a draft with capped bonus pools, it seems crazy to me not to participate fully.
The Orioles have obviously decided they are still going to go with players closer to the majors than tender-aged international prospects, as they have now traded away what would be their 1st and 4th round international picks in the first international draft.
Looking at what the Orioles netted today, it seems highly likely that they’d have been better off with the two international slots. Magnifico and Fry are obvious improvements over the two pitchers designated for assignment to make space on the 40-man roster. Both look to have major league stuff as bullpen pitchers, are still looking for their command, and are young enough they may yet find it.
However, Oliver Drakes, although already 30, has even better stuff than Magnifico or Fry, and has the same command issues. Drake may yet be as effective a major league reliever as either Magnifico or Fry going forward, despite a a poor start (in only three AAA relief appearances) this year.
This doesn’t look like a worthy trade for 1st and 4th round international slots, unless the aforementioned player to be named later turns out to be great.
One of the reasons the Twins have been terrible in recent years is Joe Mauer‘s move from catcher to 1B/DH. He went from being one of the best catchers in baseball to an aging 1Bman who no longer hits .300 and hits for no power. He hasn’t had a .400 slugging percentage since 2013, and that just kills you from 1B/DH position, even if Mauer still gets on base like a starting IB/DH.
The Twins’ demise (and I well remember when the Twinkies were the-small-market-team-that-could) is hardly entirely Joe’s fault. He was still performing at a Hall of Fame caliber in 2012 when the team lost 96 games anyway.
Most players of Mauer’s talents add power as they age. Even if you see the 28 HRs Joe hit in his best season (2009) as a fluke, since he’s never hit more than 13 in any other major league season, Mauer had more than 50 extra base hits in two other seasons during his prime. Usually, a lot of those doubles and triples turn into home runs as the number of lines on the back of the baseball card gets longer.
For years I advocated that playing a guy of Mauer’s size (6’5″ and 225 lbs) who could hit like a young Joe Mauer at catcher for years and years was going to ruin a perfectly good Hall of Fame career. I turned out to be right, but not for the reasons (injuries) I expected.
Traditionally, big catchers who hit so well that they play too much burn out right quick, usually because of leg and back problems. However, Mauer still runs surprisingly well for a man his size who has played more than 900 MLB games at catcher.
Mauer’s hit eight triples and stolen seven bases in eight attempts over the last three seasons. He isn’t going to win any team footraces, but he’s certainly not among ten, or probably even 20, slowest IB/DH types in MLB. I initially thought that perhaps all that catching had ruined his legs, but it doesn’t match with the speed stats above, or the fact that he still plays pretty regularly for a player with knee and back problems.
Instead, Mauer’s ruin seems to have been the concussion he suffered in August 2013, as the result of foul balls off his mask, something no catcher can avoid. (espn.com’s recap doesn’t even mention it, since Mauer probably toughed it out and finished the game.) Here’s a source who almost certainly knows more about the Twins than I do from mid-season 2015, which attribute the drop in batting average, and, inferencially, his failure to add power, to his 2013 brain injury. That off season, Mauer admitted to vision problems as a result of the concussion which lingered through the 2015 season.
I still think that Mauer may yet be an 18-20 HR a year player, at least for one season. He isn’t that old for a player of his proven ability, he still runs well, and he may eventually get over the concussion that occurred more than three and a half years ago, particularly since he’s never played catcher again. It’s hard for me to believe that a player of Mauer’s proven offensive ability can’t show a little pop and potentially have one last great offensive season (or at least an OPS over .850) in the two years before his contract expires.
As for Joe Mauer’s long-term contract, what are you gonna do? The Twins had to sign Mauer to the long-term enormous deal because he was the local boy who made good. Mauer had earned that contract, because how could the fan base not love him? It’s just an unfortunate, even if somewhat predictable, bummer, because how could a team not overplay a big catcher of Mauer’s ability?
Baseball America recently published its list of its top ten prospects for the 2017 Amateur Draft. The top two players, high school star Hunter Greene and Louisville 1B/P Brendan McKay are described as two-way stars (offense and defense) who the drafting teams will probably develop as pitchers.
I wish MLB teams and the players themselves would be more willing to develop the players as two-way stars, like Japan’s Shohei Otani. There is a certain logic to what I am saying, at least so far as those prospects who are developed as pitchers in pro baseball. Because pitchers are so susceptible to arm injuries, developing the player at least in part as a position player is basically a kind of insurance policy, since if he blows out his arm, he could still prove to be a major league hitter.
In the case of Greene and McKay, their talent levels as baseball players are probably so high that they could potentially develop into stars either as pitchers or afield. If the player quickly proves in the low minors that the player’s professional potential is as one or the other, you haven’t lost much but committing a minor league season or two to doing double duty.
MLB teams and amateur players don’t typically do so for a number of reasons. The teams quickly decide how they like the youngster better and train him toward that narrow goal. That’s what they based their 1st round draft pick on.
Also, each MLB team ideally wants to be developing one player at each position on each minor league team, because in most cases those are the guys who are one day going to contribute at the major league level. Developing a player as a two-way star means some degree of platooning somewhere, as I explain below.
The amateur player’s primary concern is getting as big a signing bonus as possible. Since the team almost always considers their value at the moment of selection as either or, the player’s financial incentive is clearly with doing what the team wants the player to do.
I would love to see a young player like Greene or McKay say, “I’m willing to sign for $1M under slot if you will agree to play me at least X number of games in the field. I’m good enough to do both, and I just might add a great deal of value if I can prove it.
In 2016’s NPB season, Shohei Otani went 10-4 as a pitcher with a 1.86 ERA and 174 Ks in 140 innings pitched. As mainly a DH, he slashed .322/.416/.588 in 104 games and 382 plate appearances. Otani would have led the Pacific League in OPS if he’d had only 61 more plate appearances. Oh, and by the way, his team the Nippon Ham Fighters won the 2016 Nippon Series.
You can’t tell me that the way the Fighters used Otani in 2016 didn’t have a lot to do with the team’s success, since while he could have potentially pitched exclusively for the same overall value, he would have had to throw a truly unhealthy number of innings to do so. Otani, who is still only 22 years old, could be better, on both sides of the ball, in any of the next few years than he was in 2016.
Developing a two-way player requires a team to be willing to platoon, at least at the DH position, since a two-way player is going to miss games recovering from his pitching efforts. Also, teams willing to do so don’t typically get to select the two-way player before the team that most highly values him as a pitching prospect.
On the other hand, MLB organizations realistically expect only a couple of players at any level below AA ball to eventually make the Show. Platooning to develop a true MLB prospect on both sides of the ball is not overly burdensome, since it’s unlikely that any one MLB team will have more than one of these players in its minor league system at any one time.
I’d don’t think it’s any surprise that the very best of the best amateur players feature real two-way prospects. Youngsters with great physical talent who really understand the game at a physical level are going to be able to hit, pitch and field.
That said, I will admit that it’s either to find the next Shohei Otani in NPB than it is in MLB. Since MLB is the better league, you have to be better on both sides of the ball to be either a pitching ace or an hitting star, let alone both.
At the end of the day, it’s probably going to take Greene saying, “I’m willing to take only $5.4M or $6.4M in order to play both ways,” or Brendan McKay saying, “I’m willing to accept $5.0M or $5.85M to play both ways,” in order for MLB to develop a true two-way player.
I’m sure we haven’t seen the last two-way player in MLB, but it’s sure unlikely to be any more common in the future MLB than in its been in MLB past, for the reasons suggested above.
