Sunday, April 14, 2013
MLB seeks answer to increasing African-American participation in baseball - Sports - The Boston Globe
(bostonglobe.com)
posted on April 14, 2013 at 12:05 PM by Jim Furtado to brawls, jackie robinson, race in baseball, red sox, rumors
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1. bobm posted on July 22, 2012 at 01:37 PM # hit 0 | hit 0Upton - Larry Reynolds
Span - CAA Sports (Joe Urbon)
Willingham - Matt Sosnick
The mind of the average American, ladies and gentlemen.
It's not so much of a stretch. Victorino has more power.
EDIT: Thanks bobm for the needed agent list.
I guess so, but his SLG is all of ten points higher this year.
EDIT: And everything else is worse, from his fielding to his batting average.
Probably not. Unless I am missing someone obvious, most of their best prospects are in A ball. The closest thing they have to Major League ready prospects are some back end rotation guys (Phelps, Mitchell), a likely second division starting second baseman (Corban Joseph) and Banuelos who isn't really ready for the Majors. The Yankee system is pretty thin compared to recent seasons, due to injuries, regression and guys getting moved.
If so, would it really be wise for them to make that trade when they're already, myriad injuries and all, the best team in the league?
Probably not for this season. Jones/Ibanez is a pretty effective platoon, even if Ibanez is a horrible OFer. Carry them and a 5th guy (Wise) for late inning defense and it covers them for the postseason.
However, I think if they get any of these guys, it will be with an eye towards keeping them long term (like Granderson or Swisher). I would be happy if they put a lot of talent into acquiring Upton for example. I don't see anyone in the system I wouldn't trade to get him.
That doesn't make any sense. Even setting aside the fact that the Diamondbacks appear to be desperate to get rid of Upton there's absolutely no reason for them to want Cano in return. What use would they have for a guy who is a free agent after this season and plays the same position as one of their strongest performers in 2012?
That was apparently Neal Huntington's philosophy when he called Dayton Moore to ask if he's interested in doing Billy Butler for Justin Wilson.
Jim, I think the "Cano in any deal" comment was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that, for the time being, Towers is asking for the moon.
I forgot about Hill (there's never any D-Backs coverage on this coast), but it was more of a general statement that Upton will cost the world to any team trading for him.
Is there any reason why AZ would be desperate to get rid of Upton?
Other than theories of an undisclosed injury, that's the question a great many of us have been asking.
#### yes, if that's what it takes. Upton's having a power outage, but ####, he's 24 and has a career OPS+ of 117.
If you're the D-Backs and you're (possibly) moving a player because of (hypothetical) injuries, why are you taking a deal whose centerpiece is an OFer who has real and concrete injuries that have him on the DL and out for most of the season?
I don't see how the D-backs can't get some other teams to do better prospect wise than the Yanks, but then again, the Yankees seem to pull off ridiculas deals every other year.
(a) Depends on the D-Backs motivation
(b) Obviously dependent on a physical of Gardner
I was just trying to think of what ML-ready, young-ish, cheap-ish player the Yanks could trade. But I see Gardner will actually be 29 next year which is a good bit older than I thought. So I'll withdraw that hypothetical.
I actually think there's something to be said for top prospects who perform "only" pretty well in their early 20s. There are a fair number of guys like that who turned into stars in their primes (the most out-there example being Josh Hamilton -- and I have to confess to having had too many glasses of wine to think of another one at the moment) who looked like they might be disappointments in their first few years. Some of that is a perception problem: Gary Sheffield was not a SS, but he was a great hitter, and his early troubles don't negate that, for example.
The thing about Upton is that he's having an off year and still has an OPS+ over 100, and he's still very young. Like I said, you may not be getting the next Griffey if you acquire him, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were 3-5 years of 160 OPS+'s in his future.
Yeah, there are more guys than you think who were really good in their early 20's, and never developed beyond that level. Upton's older brother is one, too, of course. BJ Upton is a fine player, and you could easily win a championship with him in centerfield, but when he was 22 he looked like he could become the next Willie Mays, and now he looks more like the next Brian McRae.
This speaks more to the unpredictability of baseball than it does any fault of Justin Upton's. Most guys don't reach stardom, they windup as merely solid.
Justin Upton might be more likely to have a solid but unspectacular career than a superstar career but he is also one of the most likely guys in his age group to become a superstar.
I'm not sure we can still say that. Look at his top 10 comparables on BBREF. Eight of them faded quickly. The other two are Jack Clark and Boog Powell, who are hard to call really comparable.
That combined with his inconsistency and his team seeming to be desperate to trade him make me think that he's a huge risk.
He's not remotely like Cabrera or Pujols or ARod were at the same age. On the other hand, among players born in 1987, only Austin Jackson has a higher career WAR (because of defense) and only Buster Posey is clearly a better player.
In theory, I agree, but given what the Cubs are trying to do and what I assume the D-Backs are looking to do in an Upton trade, I can't see how they could line up a trade that makes sense for both teams.
Starlin Castro for Upton plus another player might work for both teams - a challenge trade. What's the fallout in Chicago like over Castro's off-season rape charge? How would that play PR-wise in Arizona?
Justin Upton has five plus tools on the baseball field, and scouts have projected him to be a superstar since he was legally able to drive. He might not get any better than this - baseball is unpredictable - but I'd much rather have Justin Upton than a player with a similar statistical track record but lesser tools and scouting reports.
From what I can tell (I live in Chicago, read the Tribune and watch TV, but never listen to sports radio), absolutely nothing. That said, Castro definitely has his detractors here (mostly for being an airhead at times on the field).
Maybe we need Upton so folks can stop pining for Melky? (traded for Vazquez. super ugh)
OK - sure. But how much of the hype over Upton comes from the fact that when Justin Upton was finishing high school and entering the draft, his older brother BJ was tearing up AAA as a 20-year old?
For what it's worth, Clark and Powell are the two guys on Upton's comparables list who were the worst athletes. Well, maybe Del Ennis was a worse athlete than Clark. I'm not fit to judge. But the #1 comp was Ruben Sierra, followed by Andruw Jones, Tony Conigliaro, Canseco, Clark, Powell, Juan Gonzalez, Cesar Cedeno, Ennis and Francoeur. That's a bunch of guys who mostly fizzled out who had great starts to their careers. Sierra had his last really good year at age 25, but managed to hang around, mostly as a replacement-level player, until he was 40. Sierra ran and threw well at a young age. What these guys all shared as young players was a poor strikeout-to-walk ratio. Clark and Powell started to draw more walks, and kept their careers going. The rest of these guys did neither.
It's a done deal.
it's a strange world we live in....
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