Some random thoughts for a Friday…
Hard Slots Would Make Baseball Whiter
My piece two weeks ago on fixing, or rather not fixing the draft, drew a slew of comments, and one aspect of that discussion got me thinking a bit more. Major League Baseball has put considerable resources in terms of both time and money to address the problem of steadily decreasing participation and attendance from the African-American community. Those efforts are well-founded, honorable, and have already led to a number of success stories. With that in mind, has the Rule 4 draft committee, headed by Braves president John Schuerholz, considered how a hard slot system would, in the end, make baseball that much whiter?
The problem, as explained in the piece two weeks ago, is that a hard slot system will lead to less money being available to high school talent, with much of those players therefore choosing to go to college instead of going pro. If that's the case, with many African-Americans coming from low-income backgrounds, football and basketball will often be more attractive options for multi-sport stars. The crux of the problem is that both sports are revenue-generating, which means that they often provide full scholarships. Division I baseball allows for just 11.7 scholarships per team, meaning that the money is spread around, with even the best of players usually responsible for some financial aspect of their education.
College baseball's race issue is even more staggering than that of the big leagues, as a recent study found that even in the powerful SEC, where the states represented have more than 20 percent African-American population, African-Americans represented less than 2 percent of the player pool, and not even 1 percent of the attendance. Hard slots would certainly help address that issue, but fixing college baseball's problems isn't MLB's concern. Baseball America's Aaron Fitt, who leads that magazine's college baseball coverage, agrees that such a system would be good for college baseball, while hampering advancements made in the pros. “You can envision a scenario where you'd be funneling more players to college baseball,” Fitt said. “But short-term, it would make the pro ranks less diverse as you are no longer buying players away from other sports. Kids are going to go with the full ride—that's just common sense.”
Still, Fitt explained, there is the possibility of such a system helping both sports. “If more players are going to school because of strict slotting, teams could change,” explained Fitt. “It's obviously good for the college game, but maybe it's also a way to level the playing field as you could see some of the smaller schools offering full rides to bring in a star and fill in more of their roster with walk-ons.”
A possibility to be sure, but also an organic one that would take years to come to fruition. MLB's moves to address draft-related problems are usually short-sighted, and that would be no different with a hard slotting system following the current figure, but this time, the collateral damage could potentially be far greater.
Is Josh Leuke Worth the Trouble?
Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times reported on Thursday the the Mariners claim to have not known about reliever Josh Lueke's disturbing criminal past before acquiring him at midseason from the Rangers in the Cliff Lee trade. On the surface, it seems like damage control, as I knew, and so did the entire industry. The story wasn't so big when Lueke was an unheralded prospect, but now that he's throwing bullets and is on the verge of the big leagues (at least talent-wise), the right-hander's past is becoming more well known. All of the sordid details are in the link provided above, and it adds to the question of how much can a team put up with in the name of talent. Players with anger issues like Milton Bradley I can understand, even those with some less serious one-time issues like Brett Myers I can handle, but the Mariners deserve every bit of bad public relations they get from having Lueke on the payroll, and the Rangers deserved the same. I'm all for redemption and second chances, and while I'd be against any sort of official ban from baseball for the 25-year-old, I'm equally embarrassed for baseball when teams can't police these sorts of situations themselves and allow him to pursue a big-league career on their dime.
Aroldis Chapman and the 105 mph Fastball
The story seemed apocryphal at first, that Chapman had hit 105 mph on the gun in a Triple-A appearance. A quick Twitter poll I conducted found six responders believing the number, with 83 doubting, and a quick industry poll found about the same ratio. Then came Chapman's two electrifying big-league showings that included 103 and 104-mph readings and all of a sudden things didn't seem so crazy. Or are they? While watching the ninth inning of Wednesday night's Rangers victory over the Royals, closer Neftali Feliz had his fastball recorded at 103 mph, and a quick view of GameDay data for the game has every pitcher in the game throwing 2-4 mph faster than one would normally expect based on previous scouting reports. The game also took place in Kansas City, where Chris Sale was recorded at 101 mph less than two weeks ago. I don't believe Feliz's 103, I don't believe Sale's 101, and because of that, I'm doubting Chapman's 103 and 104, though I'd certainly buy consistent triple digits out of the Cuban southpaw. Radar guns are sensitive pieces of equipment that need to be consistently calibrated, and that could be the extent of the issue, but at the same time, there's been so much good press generated by Chapman's velocity since the 105-mph reading, that conspiracy theorists are starting to ask questions. Now that MLB doesn't have juiced balls or players anymore, are the radar guns juiced?
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Kansas City's PITCHf/x system, on the other hand, has been recording speeds that are around 1 mph too fast this year, as compared to other parks. I'll have to check Wednesday's game to see if it was even faster than that, but I've noticed that people tend to see the pitchers and games where velocities are 2-4 mph faster and ignore the pitchers/games where velocities are the same or slower, even if they altogether average out to around +1 mph.
Cincinnati, on the other hand, is around -0.2 mph for the whole year and very close to correct for the most recent homestand.
So you can take Chapman's numbers at face value, but subtract a couple mph from Feliz in KC.
I noticed this when the Yankees played these teams and was wondering if any of the data collection services take this into account or normalize for it.
(just sayin')
Hard slotting will lead fewer HS players to be signed by MLB teams. This is just supply and demand. Some of these players who don't sign will play college ball, leading to the increase in the talent pool for college baseball. These players will eventually be drafted out of college and hence will ameliorate the initial talent drop in the MLB draft. However, some of these players will go to college and play other sports besides baseball and eventually be drafted to play in these others sports. These players will never play professional baseball and hence the overall talent level in MLB will in the long-term be lower.
This system will save MLB money both in terms of lower signing bonuses and more players playing college ball requiring fewer resources spent on talent development. (One could argue that just as many players will be drafted, so these last saving won't materialize; instead, resources will be funneled towards individuals that aren't as talented and were hence willing to be signed for the hard slot value.) However, the loss of premier athletes (particularly players like Donovan Tate who would be able to play football at a high level) means baseball's talent pool will shrink overall.
It's unclear to me what the hard slotting on race will be. If we assume that African-American HS baseball players are poorer on average than white HS baseball players (which seems implicit in the article above), there should be two factors: on one hand, they may be forced into other college sports than can support them through scholarship, but on the other hand, they may be more willing than their white counterparts to take the lower, hard-slotted dollar amount to sign, since either they or their family is in more need of the cash. This latter case would lead to fewer African-American baseball players leaving the sport for football, etc. than white players. I suspect the true effect will be a little of both and not effect the black/white mix in MLB, although Hispanic players, who won't be effected by the draft, should show up in increased proportion.
The drag on the ball is proportional to the air density. Air density is dependent on altitude, temperature, humidity, etc. However, the drag is not going to have much effect at the points near the release of the ball where the speed is being measured. It's going to affect how much speed the ball loses from release to plate crossing.
There is also, however, an additional effect that I have observed from temperature on pitch speeds. Pitchers tend to throw about 1 mph harder for every 40 degrees that the temperature increases. I don't know the cause of this, but possibly it's because it's easier for them to get loose and warmed up.
That said, I hope the M's release him. Then he can go somewhere else and get another chance. The people jealous and judging of athletes just need to get their fix. People seem to forget that lessons are sometimes hard learned. If he does jail time then so be it, but he cannot be robbed of his profession.
This absolutely will not happen. Smaller schools, especially privates, see athletics as a revenue generating enterprise, but not in the way you normally think. They spread scholarship dollars around, so that nearly everyone ends up paying something, and frequently quite a bit, just to play their sport.