Connor McCaffery Baseball Prospect

[ArvadaHawk]

We got baseball "experts" on here too? Nice!

dude, being an expert is easy. just ask me and i'll tell ya.

 

[ArvadaHawk]

Baseball is a cruel sport that will weed out the weak. No matter how athletic or entitled you are, you can't be a "specialist". You have to hit the pitching. You have to field and throw the ball.

If he has the chops to be a major league prospect he will probably get around 1,000 minor league at bats. Those pitchers will help him make his mind up as to how good he can be. As for his speed, baseball hasn't been less speed oriented at any time since the 1950's. The steal, the hit and run, an even hitting behind the runner are all skills that are on life support as teams try get as many boppers as possible in the lineup and get them uppercutting. And it's not just at the college or pro level. My eighth grader, who won't even play baseball in high school because of track and field, played for an academy team last spring. The first indoor practice the coach was teaching the kids launch angle. I spent all subsequent practices finding a place to go jogging. When AAU basketball started in April he started missing too many baseball tournaments to justify being on the team. The baseball coach nicely refunded us a pro rated share of our team fees. My son's swing wasn't so lucky. It was July before he finally went back to his short, level, compact swing.

the reason i like baseball so much is that no player can hide and you can't fake your stats, or the importance of your stats, and every player has stats. baseball has a way of humbling a person.

 

[DDThompson]

the reason i like baseball so much is that no player can hide and you can't fake your stats, or the importance of your stats, and every player has stats. baseball has a way of humbling a person.

1 - baseball keeps you humble.

2 - but physical "shortcomings" can be overcome.

3 - team success is so individual-oriented as no other team sport

4 - individual success can be weighed fairly to history (sans steroid era). there is a continuity to the game.

5 - mental aspect of this game is so weighty: from confidence level, pitch-to-pitch strategy and tactics, in-game adjustments, game-to-game, short-term, and seasonal concepts.

6 - and there's no time clock = the game isn't over until it's really over.



I know the other team sports have all or some of those points as well, but those points in relation to baseball --

it's just a different feel to it.

 

[Northside Hawk]

1 - baseball keeps you humble.

2 - but physical "shortcomings" can be overcome.

3 - team success is so individual-oriented as no other team sport

4 - individual success can be weighed fairly to history (sans steroid era). there is a continuity to the game.

5 - mental aspect of this game is so weighty: from confidence level, pitch-to-pitch strategy and tactics, in-game adjustments, game-to-game, short-term, and seasonal concepts.

6 - and there's no time clock = the game isn't over until it's really over.



I know the other team sports have all or some of those points as well, but those points in relation to baseball --

it's just a different feel to it.

Also, the playing dimensions different on field to field. And many parks, especially Wrigley Field, play different at different times of the year and when the wind shifts, sometimes inning to inning.

The only other major sport that has different dimensions from arena to arena is hockey, and even there they don't differ much. Many fans don't even notice that one NHL or USHL hockey rink may be slightly larger or smaller than the next.

 

[Northside Hawk]

the reason i like baseball so much is that no player can hide and you can't fake your stats, or the importance of your stats, and every player has stats. baseball has a way of humbling a person.

Yep. You have to take your turn at bat, unless you're an American league pitcher. You have to play defense, unless you're a full time DH. You can't sub players in and out, because once they're out of the game they can't come back. You can have pinch hitters and defensive replacements, but they're usually not employed until the late innings.

 

[DDThompson]

Also, the playing dimensions different on field to field. And many parks, especially Wrigley Field, play different at different times of the year and when the wind shifts, sometimes inning to inning.

The only other major sport that has different dimensions from arena to arena is hockey, and even there they don't differ much. Many fans don't even notice that one NHL or USHL hockey rink may be slightly larger or smaller than the next.

-- the dimensional uniformity of the infield, and a ballparks outfield uniqueness and seasonal play.

Great point and I'm adding that to my list. Thanks.

 

[DDThompson]

there's something about:

athletic shoes squeaking on a floor,

the harmony of plastic collisions echoing with human gutteral creczendos,

and the sound of a wood bat hitting a leather ball.


that one, that one is the purest sound in sports.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

Baseball has not trended toward speed. You're right. It's only worth it if you use it. MLB has trended to be very judicious in using speed.

It's about OPS% & WAR

It's too bad more don't. I suspect they will again. Many a team has been successful doing it. I remember vividly the 91 WS game 7. Dan Gladdon had a bloop double he had to hustle to make. They bunted him over to 3rd and with the outfield in close a routine fly ball to left by Gene Larkin brought him in. That was as good as it got for my Twins fandom as a kid haha.

 

[Robowe]

It's too bad more don't. I suspect they will again. Many a team has been successful doing it. I remember vividly the 91 WS game 7. Dan Gladdon had a bloop double he had to hustle to make. They bunted him over to 3rd and with the outfield in close a routine fly ball to left by Gene Larkin brought him in. That was as good as it got for my Twins fandom as a kid haha.

After walking Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek to load the bases.

 

[DDThompson]

It's too bad more don't. I suspect they will again. Many a team has been successful doing it. I remember vividly the 91 WS game 7. Dan Gladdon had a bloop double he had to hustle to make. They bunted him over to 3rd and with the outfield in close a routine fly ball to left by Gene Larkin brought him in. That was as good as it got for my Twins fandom as a kid haha.

Yep. I love home runs and bashing the ball, but I love "poor man's" ball, too.

I'm wondering if the steroid era tilted the love for OPS and WAR to an extreme. Of course, pitchers' delivery time to the plate had a big role in cutting down on SB, but the play you described above.... just don't see that kind of ball very much.

 

[Northside Hawk]

Yep. I love home runs and bashing the ball, but I love "poor man's" ball, too.

I'm wondering if the steroid era tilted the love for OPS and WAR to an extreme. Of course, pitchers' delivery time to the plate had a big role in cutting down on SB, but the play you described above.... just don't see that kind of ball very much.

You would think stolen bases would be due for a comeback. Batters run counts so deep today that there would be more than enough opportunities to take off. It also puts pressure on the catcher and can distract the pitcher.

Stolen bases, like everything else, are an art that requires a lot of practice to master. It takes more than speed, you to study pitchers and their moves to first and to the plate. I know one thing, more movement on the bases would cut down on the radical infield shifts that are so popular today.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

After walking Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek to load the bases.

Of course they weren't pitching to either of them with winning run on 3rd and less than 2 outs. Especially after what Puckett did the night before

 

[DDThompson]

You would think stolen bases would be due for a comeback. Batters run counts so deep today that there would be more than enough opportunities to take off. It also puts pressure on the catcher and can distract the pitcher.

Stolen bases, like everything else, are an art that requires a lot of practice to master. It takes more than speed, you to study pitchers and their moves to first and to the plate. I know one thing, more movement on the bases would cut down on the radical infield shifts that are so popular today.

Good points all around. And I think SB are due for a comeback for the reasons you give. A couple of clubs will starting zagging while everyone else is zigging. More than likely it will be a "small market" team.

 

[Robowe]

You would think stolen bases would be due for a comeback. Batters run counts so deep today that there would be more than enough opportunities to take off. It also puts pressure on the catcher and can distract the pitcher.

Stolen bases, like everything else, are an art that requires a lot of practice to master. It takes more than speed, you to study pitchers and their moves to first and to the plate. I know one thing, more movement on the bases would cut down on the radical infield shifts that are so popular today.

Advance stats are helping lead to the decline in steals in MLB. If you want to get real nerdy, here's a link for you. Full of charts/numbers.

Advanced stats didn’t make an entrance into the MLB until the early 00s. Before that, teams were likely very inefficient in many aspects of the game simply because they had no way to measure how efficient they were. As analytics ramped up and teams began to track every part of their strategy as well as the expected value of every move, they realized that stealing isn’t as lucrative as they once thought.

 

[mopkins]

Baseball is a cyclical game. Speed will come back, even at the major league level. The problem is that managers are changing. Whitey Herzog types, who learned the game by beating around the minors for six years then hanging onto major league playing careers for another six, don't exist anymore. Joe Maddon is one of the last of that era. More and more major league managers are becoming figureheads, who's strings are being pulled by Ivy league front office types who might as well by actuaries for all the time they spend crunching numbers.

Free agents are having problems because they demand too many years and too much money on the back ends of contracts. Owners would have no problem shelling out the money if it was for fewer years. But they don't want to pay for past performance, like the Angels are for Albert Pujols. Egotistical agents like Scott Boras, who think they run the game (and are proven right every time they outsmart an owner) sometimes burn their clients and end up settling for fewer years and less money than the former club originally offered (Jake Arrietta).

If I'm Bryce Harper I ask for $45M a year for 3 years. Or $60M for 1 year. If you can stay healthy and productive you could make insane dollars on shorter deals.

Anymore teams don't want to shell out these ridiculous 10 year Pujols/Mauer deals that end up crippling a franchise for a decade. They finally got smart-ish

 

[mopkins]

the reason i like baseball so much is that no player can hide and you can't fake your stats, or the importance of your stats, and every player has stats. baseball has a way of humbling a person.

Baseball is a weird game in that its basically an individual sport played as a team. People tend to view it as a team sport but the reality is that almost everything done on the field is done individually.

 

[ssckelley]

If I'm Bryce Harper I ask for $45M a year for 3 years. Or $60M for 1 year. If you can stay healthy and productive you could make insane dollars on shorter deals.

Anymore teams don't want to shell out these ridiculous 10 year Pujols/Mauer deals that end up crippling a franchise for a decade. They finally got smart-ish

If I’m Harper I’m looking to get as much guaranteed money that I can get.

 

[Hawkfnntn]

If I'm Bryce Harper I ask for $45M a year for 3 years. Or $60M for 1 year. If you can stay healthy and productive you could make insane dollars on shorter deals.

Anymore teams don't want to shell out these ridiculous 10 year Pujols/Mauer deals that end up crippling a franchise for a decade. They finally got smart-ish

Yeah it took teams awhile to figure it out but I don't think Harpers going to get some 300 plus mil 10 yr deal. It'll be closer to 200 and 4-6 years. 5 yrs is a long long time in sports. For either side to commit to much more than that is crazy to me when your talking about the guaranteed $ their getting. Miggy Cabrerras deal is unreal. He's going to get 30 mill/yr for like 4 more years no matter what and he's pretty much over the hill done he did nothing last yr.
The Mauer deal didn't turn out nearly as bad as what Pujols, Miggy, Cano and some others are going to end up having. Mauer wasn't too great the last 2 yrs but it's all done now. Those others have been underperforming their deals for awhile and have quite a bit of time still left.
If I were Harper betting on yourself in the short term can be risky. Any player should do what those guys did if you can. But if Harper got hurt after 2 yrs really bad and his production fell even after coming back the demand wouldn't be there for him so he wouldn't be able to get as big a pay day again... That could cost him big time so no agent would really suggest that. He's got Boras I believe so safe to say he'll be shooting for as close to the moon as he can get

 

[Robowe]

Yeah it took teams awhile to figure it out but I don't think Harpers going to get some 300 plus mil 10 yr deal. It'll be closer to 200 and 4-6 years. 5 yrs is a long long time in sports. For either side to commit to much more than that is crazy to me when your talking about the guaranteed $ their getting. Miggy Cabrerras deal is unreal. He's going to get 30 mill/yr for like 4 more years no matter what and he's pretty much over the hill done he did nothing last yr.
The Mauer deal didn't turn out nearly as bad as what Pujols, Miggy, Cano and some others are going to end up having. Mauer wasn't too great the last 2 yrs but it's all done now. Those others have been underperforming their deals for awhile and have quite a bit of time still left.
If I were Harper betting on yourself in the short term can be risky. Any player should do what those guys did if you can. But if Harper got hurt after 2 yrs really bad and his production fell even after coming back the demand wouldn't be there for him so he wouldn't be able to get as big a pay day again... That could cost him big time so no agent would really suggest that. He's got Boras I believe so safe to say he'll be shooting for as close to the moon as he can get

Gotta be able to pay the mistress ...

 

[Hawkfnntn]

Gotta be able to pay the mistress ...

Unreal. Yeah I'd heard about that. She's getting all that and he'll hardly notice it being gone. Either she's got a great lawyer and his sucks or that judge just wanted to really stick it to him. All those additional perks were stupid to throw in there. Just get more $ and she can decide how to spend it. I get the medical stuff and life ins policy. I suppose he should be lucky he isn't being forced to pay for their college too.. I'm surprised judge didn't set a minimum amount he has to spend on all the Bday parties... geesh