By stretching the Jordan curve theorem to its most positive area…then, yes.
Don’t even try telling Bulls and White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf that Michael Jordan’s attempt at baseball was a flop.
‘‘There’s a common misconception among people that Michael Jordan failed as a baseball player,’’ Reinsdorf said. ‘‘And in my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth.’’
‘‘The last time he had played baseball was as a 17-year-old, as a pitcher, in Wilmington, N.C., where the competition was obviously not very big,’’ Reinsdorf continued. ‘‘The next time he played baseball, he was 31 years old, so he hadn’t played in 14 years. He was signed as a hitter, not a pitcher, and sent to AA ball. We don’t send anyone to AA ball when we draft him. You draft somebody after three years of college and he still goes to A ball. But we had to send him to AA because the facilities weren’t adequate to handle the media anyplace else. And he hit .202 in AA without having played for 14 years. I thought that was phenomenal. And then he went to the [Arizona] Fall League and he hit [.252] against the top prospects in Major League Baseball.’’
...If not for the strike that wiped out major-league ball from Aug. 12, 1994, to April 2, 1995, Reinsdorf believes Jordan would have played at the AAA level and gone on to reach the majors as a backup outfielder.
‘‘I don’t think he would have been a frontline player, but I wouldn’t put anything past him because he’s such a driven athlete,’’ Reinsdorf said.
Repoz
Posted: February 16, 2013 at 07:33 AM |
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1. willcarrolldoesnotsuk Posted: February 16, 2013 at 10:35 AM (#4370630)I mean, I don't know what was in it for Michael Jordan (my theory is that he was trying to work through the unexpected death of his father, who was a baseball fan), but it was amazing.
Why did the White Sox send Jordan to AA, anyway? It should have been obvious he would be overmatched there, having not played baseball at all for almost 15 years. I'm too young to remember the details of it. Did Jordan refuse to play any lower?
I always felt sort of cheated by the timing of Jordan's absence from the NBA. I think the 1994/1995 Rockets were better than anyone Jordan beat in the Finals except maybe the 1993 Suns, plus they would have presented a unique matchup problem for the Bulls (the Bulls would have been completely helpless to stop Olajuwon). If any team in the 1990s might have had a chance at taking down Jordan's Bulls in the playoffs, I think that Rockets team would have been it.
It would be phenomenal if *I* bat .202. (also 30 steals, 18 CS..ouch Michael). I don't think .202 in AA is outrageous for any world-class athlete who played high-school ball. IMHO.
RTFE
Yep. Hitting professional pitching is an exceptionally difficult athletic feat.
Not revisionism, common sense.
The Jordan piece to read is this one:
http://espn.go.com/espn/story/_/page/Michael-Jordan/michael-jordan-not-left-building
"THE OPPOSITE OF this creeping nostalgia is the way Jordan has always collected slights, inventing them -- nurturing them. He can be a breathtaking #######: self-centered, bullying and cruel. That's the ugly side of greatness. He's a killer, in the Darwinian sense of the word, immediately sensing and attacking someone's weakest spot."
"Jordan is used to being the most important person in every room he enters and, going a step further, in the lives of everyone he meets."
"The people in the suite know about his ego, and his moods, and his anger. They know better than most.... But they also know Jordan, and if they're being honest, they love him.... So they think all the stories of Michael being Michael are funny, even endearing, while someone from the outside can hear the same story and be horrified."
Well said.
I agree with everyone above it's actually amazing that Jordan could jump into the high minors after a decade of not playing baseball and be merely very bad.
That's pretty much said about the great in any field. The exact same thing was said about, oh, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Bob Dylan, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Marlon Brando....
But he's Michael Jordan. I'm sorry, I just don't think it's amazing that "Michael Jordan" could do that.
I do give him points for last playing in a baseball program that was probably just a level above sandlot. And he walked 51 times, which is about 30 more times than Pedro Ciriaco would do in a full season. Heh...he was also HBP 4 times. How'd you like to be able to tell people that you beaned Michael Jordan.
Francona did okay. But is it actually amazing that a random AA team didn't have a future significant major leaguer on it?
That is good to note. IIRC, his OBP actually went down late in the season, because crowds would boo when he got a walk. Jordan, as competitive as he was, still wanted to please the crowd and stopped walking as much.
Aren't we supposed to hold him to a higher standard. I'd be impressed if some other early 30s professional athlete could switch to baseball and not completely embarrass themselves. But Michael Jordan? It's not impressive and it's not in the the top 100 on his list athletic accomplishments.
That's exactly my point. If I told you that Bo Jackson secretly played goalkeeper for the New York Cosmos one summer, and did acceptably well...I wouldn't expect anyone to be surprised. That the greatest basketball player in history OPSed .550 in AA just isn't outrageous to me.
Tons and tons of excellent athletes can't hit a baseball to save their life. The Red Sox drafted Shaq Green-Thompson, a top football recruit, precisely because of his athleticism.
In contrast, just about any excellent athlete can make a reaction save.
There's a hell of a lot more to GKing than that...but I do recognize everyone's point about hitting a ball.
It seems like you think baseball is really easy. I would guess that he is the only person who has lived in my lifetime who could take up the sport, after essentially never having played it (he was pitcher before) and not completely embarrass himself. Is your higher standard supposed to mean that he'd somehow be expected to be more than the best non-baseball-playing baseball player in the world over a 40-year span?
Is he supposed to win a Cy Young - while batting in AA?
It is phenomenal for anyone to hit .202 when they are utterly unprepared. I was a 2nd-team all-state player in high school, and after 14 years away from the game, I'd not have been able to hit .050 in AA.
It would be phenomenal if you hit the ball fair.
That's only true if you buy into the notion that general "athletic" skills which are vital in other sports are transferable to hitting a baseball. I've seen very little evidence of that over the years. Even in the days when seasons were shorter and two sport pro athletes were relatively common, there were virtually no star athletes in other sports, other than Bo Jackson, who showed hitting talent in the Majors that was even close to the skills they'd demonstrated in the NFL or NBA.
EDIT: cokes all around
He was a pitcher in HS. Which is almost always utterly meaningless.
You're not a world-class athlete. For a sabr-friendly crowd, you guys are going in some crazy directions to make your point.
Am I impressed that an NBA player, away from the game for 14 years...coming from a program not known for competitive ball could bat .202 in AA ball? Yes. Yes I am. Am I impressed that MICHAEL JORDAN did it? Less so. Am I sneering? No. Does Michael deserve credit? Of course. I shouldn't have made it sound like "anyone who went to last year's baseketball All-star game could hit .202 in Tulsa this summer".
"there were virtually no star athletes in other sports, other than Bo Jackson, who showed hitting talent in the Majors that was even close to the skills they'd demonstrated in the NFL or NBA."
Deion Sanders had a 130 OPS+ as a CF in 1992 for Atlanta, with a league-leading 14 triples in only 97 games while hitting .304. His other years, he hit like - well, like an ok CF, not great.
Brian Jordan, a pretty good NFL player, was 8th in NL MVP voting in 1996 and had a 134 OPS+ in 1998, plus 115 RBI in 1999.
do they count?
Sure, most of them were younger than Jordan when they made the switch and all of them have taking at least a few hacks since high school, but many of them were also far more successful than Jordan at hitting.
I've always worked under the baseless assumptions that Jordan's ego wouldn't let him go to A-ball and/or that he wasn't planning on spending more than a year in the minors so there wasn't any point in putting him on anything vaguely resembling a standard development path. I have a hard time believing that Jerry Reinsdorf was so worried about the media re-enacting the Who concert tragedy in Peoria that he would retard Jordan's development as a baseball player.
Others future MLBrs in other parts of the 1994 CWS system: Mike Cameron, Ray Durham, James Baldwin, Scott Eyre, Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordonez, Mike Sirotka, Orlando Saenz - but they were all above or below AA.
Why? Why is it less impressive for Michael Jordan to hit .202 in AA than for any other NBA player (or even NBA All-Star) who hasn't played baseball above the high school level, and even that 14 years ago? Is there something about being an all-world shooting guard that should make you better at hitting a baseball? What would that something be?
I mean, I could see it if you said you were less impressed that Michael Jordan played a bad defensive center field. There I can see where his speed, athleticism, and ability to read where a basketball was going could be expected to translate directly. But as a hitter? You're talking about an all-world athletic guy coming into the sport cold with a GIANT strike zone and not COMPLETELY embarrassing himself.
Should we also say that we shouldn't be impressed by Miguel Cabrera because he's Miguel Cabrera so he should be Miguel Cabrera.
It's another of those things - - what are we measuring here?
But Jordan was 31 years old. Put him on a "standard development path" and he's 5 years from the majors, which makes him a 36-year-old rookie outfielder whose primary athletic skill - speed - peaked a decade earlier. The only way Michael Jordan could have ever made the majors was if he could blow through the minors in two years and one way to see if he could blow through the minors in two years was to start him out in AA.
Did Jordan play any baseball at all during that 14-year gap. Did he do any practicing at all as a player during that time?
I pretty sure I read that Jordan bought a luxurious bus for his team to travel in? Didn't he also have the locker rooms re-tooled to his specs?
Deion Sanders had a 130 OPS+ as a CF in 1992 for Atlanta, with a league-leading 14 triples in only 97 games while hitting .304. His other years, he hit like - well, like an ok CF, not great.
Brian Jordan, a pretty good NFL player, was 8th in NL MVP voting in 1996 and had a 134 OPS+ in 1998, plus 115 RBI in 1999.
do they count?
Deion Sanders was an A-level Hall of Fame football player with a career 89 OPS+ in the Majors. That one 97 game season aside, I wouldn't call his demonstrated baseball skills remotely comparable to his NFL skills.
Brian Jordan's entire NFL career consisted of 20 punt returns and 8 kickoff returns. He was a good baseball player who dabbled in football, not the other way around.
You're making this binary, which it isn't. There's no reason he couldn't have started at A-ball, and then moved up mid-season. I also think you're under-selling Jordan's athleticism if you think his primary athletic skill on a baseball diamond would've been speed.
I got to see a few games of Rick Ankiel at A-ball after he converted to the OF when he was 25. His path was accelerated, but he was given more opportunity for rudimentary development. From his interactions with players and the coaching staff, even from the stands in Ft. Wayne it was clear he was on a crash course for learning how to hit (I've never seen a player jabber as much with coaches during a game as he did). He apparently was not happy with the Cardinals when they sent him all the way down to A-ball, but that's what you do when a guy is overmatched at AA.
Brian Jordan started at safety for the Falcons and I think he made the Pro Bowl (though he could have been named as an injury replacement if I'm even remembering correctly) the season before he abruptly quit to play baseball full time.
What would it have been?
Exactly. I, unlike Michael Jordan, was a baseball player. In what alternate universe is this not a point in favor of "Jesus Christ, that's impressive!"????
Brian Jordan's career consisted of 32 games, 30 starts, at strong safety for the Atlanta Falcons at the ages of 23-24 (plus 4 games at age 22). He made the NFC Pro Bowl team as a reserve in 1991.
He played minor-league ball from 21 through 24 but given he never played more than half a season during that time, I'm guessing he prioritized football. I don't know when he officially gave up football but he made the Cards opening day roster at age 25 (1992) and never played in the NFL again.
I sometimes wonder how we'd look back on MJ if we'd had social media during his playing career. That really applies to the 90's as a whole. Between Michael Jordan: minor league baseball player, the OJ trial, and the Lewinsky Affair, I think it's fair to say we missed out on some absolutely fantastic memes.
If Brian Jordan was a Pro Bowl reserve - clearly an "above average player" - while only "dabbling" in football, then he is even more of a marvel than I thought!
If Bo was 31 and hadn't touched a soccer ball since he was a high schooler playing forward against low-level competition, then yes, I would be extraordinarily surprised and impressed.
Chad Ochocinco pretty much tried to do exactly that. He went back to football.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/a/aingeda01.shtml
I don't know if that was to try and prevent Ainge from quitting baseball or what..
Deion Sanders had a 130 OPS+ as a CF in 1992 for Atlanta, with a league-leading 14 triples in only 97 games while hitting .304. His other years, he hit like - well, like an ok CF, not great.
In four games of the 1992 World Series, Deion Sanders batted .533 with 4 runs, 8 hits, 2 doubles, and 1 RBI while playing with a broken bone in his foot. During the NLCS that year, he pinch hit in a playoff game, played a football game the next day, and dressed for another playoff game that night. For Bobby Cox. People thought he had demonstrated his baseball skill at the highest possible level just fine, thank you very much
You know who else had great World Series? Mickey Hatcher (career OPS+ 89, just like Sanders). Billy Hatcher (career OPS+ of 86). Brian Doyle and Bucky Dent. And there are hundreds of players most people have never heard of who put up a 130 OPS+ for a single part time season. The fact remains that Sanders was a Hall of Fame football player and a thoroughly ordinary hitter, below average is putting it politely. Obviously Sanders was one of the top two sport athletes, but the gap between his football and baseball skills was much, much greater than Bo Jackson's. Jackson's demonstrated and repeated high level skills in two major professional sports, prior to his injury, remain in a class by themselves.
------------------------------------------------
Brian Jordan's career consisted of 32 games, 30 starts, at strong safety for the Atlanta Falcons at the ages of 23-24 (plus 4 games at age 22). He made the NFC Pro Bowl team as a reserve in 1991.
He played minor-league ball from 21 through 24 but given he never played more than half a season during that time, I'm guessing he prioritized football. I don't know when he officially gave up football but he made the Cards opening day roster at age 25 (1992) and never played in the NFL again.
Point taken about Brian Jordan, whose demonstrated multi-sport talent was clearly there (if not on Bo's level), but who simply chose one sport over the other.
He basically had 4 years and almost 2000 PA, at 94-108-124-142 and out. And not CF.
Deion doesn't match Bo's numbers?
Really?
Jordan played baseball in high school too. He wasn't all-state, but he probably was pretty good (especially for that level) simply by nature of being a great athlete.
When I first heard about Michael Jordan trying out baseball, I thought he'd be able to hold his own in A or AA because the pitching isn't as well-developed, but that he'd never be a great major-leaguer because dealing with speed changes and breaking pitches requires a different level of experience that you can't fake with athleticism. I also thought that having the more developed upper body that is a part of growing out of your twenties would give him a significant strength advantage. I'd have thought that there were enough bad pitches at that level that a really good athlete would have a shot at reasonable success.
This was Michael Jordan, arguably one the greatest athletes in the history of sport, and noted for him incredible work ethic and competitiveness. He wasn't going to embarrass himself and it wasn't a stunt. I think what Jordan did was incredibly impressive by normal person standards, but he isn't a normal person. I expected him to do something incredibly impressive and I think he lived up to that expectation, but I don't think he surpassed a reasonable expectation.
Bo played 61 games in CF during the 142 year.
I'll take Jordan's MLB career over Bo's anytime. Bo had just 7.2 WAR in 4 full seasons of PA, slightly below average. Brian Jordan had 6.8 WAR in 1998. From 28-32 he had 21 WAR in about 4 seasons of playing time. A LOT of that was stellar defense but it was still 11 oWAR.
In football, Bo wins although it's not obvious how to compare running backs with strong safeties. If you average the two, Bo wins I'm sure. But Brian Jordan was a much better baseball player than Bo Jackson.
He basically had 4 years and almost 2000 PA, at 94-108-124-142 and out. And not CF.
Deion doesn't match Bo's numbers?
Really?
Howie, if this is about having to have two great careers, then nobody qualifies. But in terms of the relevant point---demonstrated ability to hit Major League pitching at a high level---Morty's reply is germane. Jackson's OPS+ for his five non-injured seasons progessed like this: 67, 94, 108, 124, 142. At that point he was 27 years old. Sanders peaked at the age of 24 with a part-time season of 130, then went down to 105, 89 and 94 before quitting. The athletic skills may have been there, but the ability to hit Major League pitching on a high level had only been demonstrated in brief spurts, sort of like Mickey Hatcher.
-----------------------------------------------
whose demonstrated multi-sport talent was clearly there (if not on Bo's level)
I'll take Jordan's MLB career over Bo's anytime.
Sure, and as long as I can have Kevin Walker on my payroll, so would I.
Sanders was All-State as a Florida prep and played in college as well (ok bat, ton of steals) - was drafted multiple times.
Bo was a high draft pick (2nd rd) coming out of HS and his college baseball prowess is likely well known to you (had a +.400 season with loads of pop).
MJ did not play in college, or shortly after leaving college. He was not all-state as a prep or considering anything special outside of basketball, afaict. Apart from being a famous guy, there was no reason to think he'd do anything.
51/ainge - that's my understanding, yeah
Brian Jordan didn't get enough pub, IMO.
Wow. Nothing personal, Andy, but in a forum full of RayDPs & Kehoskies, I think you've posted the most blatantly dishonest, misleading thing I've ever read here.
Just ... wow.
Dick Butkus' entire career consisted of 22 interceptions, BTW. Big deal.
Wow. Nothing personal, Andy, but in a forum full of RayDPs & Kehoskies, I think you've posted the most blatantly dishonest, misleading thing I've ever read here.
Not dishonest, just based on a too-quick glance at PFB-Reference, whose statistics don't really do justice to defensive players. Look at what I wrote in #52 and you'll see I've already acknowledged the point you're implicitly making.
Dick Butkus' entire career consisted of 22 interceptions, BTW. Big deal.
Again, the problem is that PFB-Reference doesn't include statistics for tackles. I shouldn't have relied on it to make that initial comment I did about Jordan.
As far as the lack of decent stats for defensive players, I suppose that's yet another thing I find profoundly unlikable about football.
The only thing Jordan did remotely well was draw walks, and given that he also struck out a lot it speaks to an overmatched player providing the only value he can. In MLB we expect this sort of player to fall off a cliff the next year. So Jordan probably would have gotten worse, not better, had he continued playing.
So he was bad, but he wasn't as bad as a player possibly could be? Oh boy.
"there were virtually no star athletes in other sports, other than Bo Jackson, who showed hitting talent in the Majors that was even close to the skills they'd demonstrated in the NFL or NBA."
does not equal
Jackson's demonstrated and repeated high level skills in two major professional sports, prior to his injury, remain in a class by themselves
Putting up a 130 OPS+ as a simultaneous two sport starter seems to easily clear the "hitting talent"..."even close" bar. It's not that big a deal so I'll stop, but shifting the argument to anything short of Jackson is no true Scotsman was not your initial premise.
Seriously, what's the expectation for a normal adult playing in AA? I would think it's something like an OPS of, I dunno, 200? I had similar numbers to Jordan on my JV team. I think I would be proud of myself if I hit a single line drive or got more than a couple proper hits during a whole season in AA.
Yes, Jordan was a world class athlete. I agree with Shock's comment #34, that doesn't change the quality of the feat in any way.
I follow the NFL come December, but not to the extent that I'm likely to remember much about a defensive player who played his entire three season career for a team I can't stand, a team that made the postseason once.
----------------------------------------
The statement
"there were virtually no star athletes in other sports, other than Bo Jackson, who showed hitting talent in the Majors that was even close to the skills they'd demonstrated in the NFL or NBA."
does not equal
Jackson's demonstrated and repeated high level skills in two major professional sports, prior to his injury, remain in a class by themselves
Putting up a 130 OPS+ as a simultaneous two sport starter seems to easily clear the "hitting talent"..."even close" bar. It's not that big a deal so I'll stop, but shifting the argument to anything short of Jackson is no true Scotsman was not your initial premise.
Read the first statement again. Do you seriously consider one brief (97 game) flurry of talent that Sanders displayed in baseball to be remotely close to his Hall of Fame football career? In that first statement I was comparing Sanders (MLB) to himself (NFL), and the gap was enormous.
Bo Jackson was on the NFL leaderboards in 2 or 3 different categories in 3 of the 4 years of his career. In 3 of those years, he had the longest run in the entire NFL. He was a second team All-Pro in 2 of those years. Jackson, unlike Sanders, was a genuine two sport star. Sanders was a one sport superstar who showed (very) brief promise in his second sport.
Let's not go too crazy when people like Brad Penny or Josh Beckett* (Whose numbers are also dragged down by the fact he apparently has decided to not even try anymore for fear of pulling a muscle I guess) have career OPS's of .350-.380 at an MLB level.
*On the flip side I readily admit 'just being an mlb pitcher' probably gives one an advantage similar to how GK's are better forwards than Alan Thropplemore in Section 22, if one is following the metaphor here.
edit: Also is there some kind of youth disconnect going on in this thread? Have I woken up in an alternate reality where Michael Jordan isn't a God? If you asked me to pick the one basketball player who had the best chance of walking away at age 31 and hitting .202 in AA...I'd say Michael Jordan every time.
I think that's just a little too pessimistic. If you did nothing but wait for a straight pitch dead center, you'd probably see enough of them to get a few good line drives. Once in a while, a pitcher is going to be trying out a curve that doesn't curve. Remember that you're able to practice several hours each day with professional coaching.
My sandlot team in DC had a future AAA pitcher in the rotation (Ray Miller, the future pitching coach for several ML teams), and I never had any problem hitting him in intrasquad games, since his repertory at the time consisted of nothing but a sinking fast ball. The problem is that there were thousands of 19 year olds who could have hit the 18 year old Ray Miller that year, and the chances are that only a tiny percentage of them would have been able to hit the 23 year old Ray Miller by the time they'd turned 24. I'd like to think I might have been one of those hitters whose skills would have evolved upward at the same rate that Miller's pitching skills did, but I'm under no illusions that I would have ever progressed any further than the Birmingham version of Michael Jordan.
In high school Josh Beckett hit ".506 and set school records with 11 home runs and 39 RBI." Couldn't find anything on Penny. These are not normal people you're talking about...
Once at Chelsea Piers I took two rounds at a batting cage that was set at 90 or 95 mph. Just for fun. Out of the 20-30 swings I had zero line drives, maybe hit 3 of them into what would be fair territory. I'm sure with practice I could have learned to put the meat of the bat on the ball consistently, but that would just be a timing trick, beginning my swing long before the ball was in the air.
(Not intended as an assessment of value)
I think it's unfair to assume that bo had reached a new level of performance, pre-injury, as opposed to a fluke or career season. It may have been a permanent improvement - there may have been more to come - but I'm not convinced that that was likely.
Also, while I think Bo was a better baseball player than Deion, it's not open and shut. For example, through age 27 (Bo's healthy years), Deion had more WAA than Jackson and almost as many WAR. (And, if you use b-ref, were less valuable over that time than Brian Jordan was during his best season.)
I'm not a football fan, so I'm just asking. How good a pro was Jackson? How good would he have been had he not played baseball and devoted himself full-time to that sport. People I know who are football fans said he could very well have been the best. ???
(Jackson's Single season high for rushing scores was five. Also, he scored less touchdowns over his career then Sanders did – again, this is just trivia.)
There should be a law for this like there is for Hitler. Whenever someone mentions Bo Jackson on the internet invariably someone will bring up Techmo Bowl. Call it the Bo Knows Law.
Jordan deserves a grade of F for his performance in AA. He should have been sent down or released well before the season ended. The .202 sort of overstates his value because players have to add more things (hit for power, play shortstop) than Jordan added to carry a .202 average. Jordan wasn't good enough to get away with hitting .202 anyway.
I'd have picked someone shorter. His height wasn't that much of an advantage for a position player, whereas in basketball it was essential. So a 6-1 Jordan might be constrained in the NBA, but be as good or better in baseball.
There have definitely been 6-6 players in baseball, but in watching Jordan play baseball, he did not look like he had a baseball player's body. Maybe he needed to be a less gangly 6-6, which probably would have limited him in basketball but helped in baseball.
"Greatest running back ever" is tricky, because he didn't have a full career. But if you could choose any running back, at the peak of their powers, to play a single game, he'd be an excellent pick.
He was fantastic. His Monday Night Football game against Seattle was one of the great performances of the ages. I dunno if he would've been the best ever, but he was clearly among the best of his generation as he was.
Serious question: has anyone done a study regarding whether pitching machines are harder to hit than real pitchers? Cause it just seems that whether the machine has a mechanical arm or is shooting the balls out...it hides the ball much better than a person does. Jus askin, I haven't been in a batting cage in forever.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBvOxicz-0
There are a few things I remember from going to games over the years. One is I've never seen anyone hit the ball as hard as Vladimir Guerrero. Another is I've never seen anyone run from 1st to 3rd as fast as Deion Sanders.
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