With the Hall of Fame results being announced today, we decided to take a trip down memory lane and dig up some old scouting reports from the Baseball America archives on some of the ballot’s notable candidates. . .
8. Barry Larkin, ss, 21, 5-11, 175, R-R
Larkin looked right at home in AA, hitting .267 for Vermont. He didn’t show power (one home run in 255 at-bats), but that will come. The key for him was just getting his feet on the ground, and he was not overpowered by the high level of competition (21 strikeouts in 255 at-bats). He will have good power for a shortstop.
6. Edgar Martinez, 3b, 25, 5-11, 175, R-R
Martinez’s discipline will produce runs. He’s averaged 70 RBIs the last four years. In the field, he’s solid, with good reactions and the soft hands of a middle infielder.
Fred McGriff, Bernie Williams and Jeff Bagwell also profiled.
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1. RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: January 09, 2012 at 06:03 PM (#4032578)The Reds at that time had a borderline HOFer in Dave Concepcion (granted at the end of his career), a future HOFer in Barry Larkin, a future All-Star in Kurt Stilwell, and a future serviceable major league utility player in Jeff Treadway all in the organization playing shortstop at that time. Not too shabby.
Didn't Gammons rave about Bagwell when he was a Red Sox farmhand or am I misremembering?
I had no idea Edgar was Carmelo's cousins.
When he wasn't raving about Jeff Sellers.
Bagwell's minor league stats don't look awesome until you consider where he played. Perhaps the toughest place to hit in organized baseball. (I think only Pat Lennon put up stats that you could really compare to Bagwell's) The Gammons/Bagwell connection came from Gammons scanning the projections in the Stats handbook and noticing that Bagwell had the highest projected batting average in the NL (As James noted though it wasn't really a prediction of a batting title. He was after all listed in the section labeled "These Guys Can Play And Might Get A Shot")
mmmm--I never knew that
Young Bernie did cover a lot of ground, but he NEVER had a strong arm, did he?
The Reds farm system in the mid 80s was ridiculous, popping out the likes of Larkin, Stillwell, Eric Davis, Paul O'Neill, Tom Browning, Kal Daniels, Chris Sabo, Tracy Jones, Joe Oliver, Rob Dibble, Norm Charlton, and Nick Esasky in a very small window of time, before Marge Schott tore it all down.
And of course I briefly thought he was going to be a God. In his Sept callup in 83 he started 341/364/707 with 5 HR in his first 44 PA. Then somebody had the bright idea to throw him a curveball (188/220/313 with an HR on the last day of the season). He formed the basis of my pet theory that teams almost seem to help each other -- "we'll throw your rookie nothing but fastballs for his first 50-100 PA so you can tell whether he can at least handle an ML fastball." (See, possibly, Yonder Alonso.)
Knowing the Cubs, Carmelo probably told them how good his cousin was but they didn't listen.
Bondseses -- father and son
Aarons -- brothers ... OK, you can use the DiMaggios or something :-)
Gooden/Sheffield -- uncle/nephew
EDIT:
Kekich/Peterson -- wife swappers
Piazza/Leiter -- partners
Tracy put in some yeoman work back in the day...
Mariano and Ruben Rivera?
Aaron Rowand-James Shields
For cousins, I think it's Jesse Burkett and Jack Glasscock.
I am pretty sure Daniels was the youngest guy in the league.
His knees were sh*t so he was out of baseball before he was 30.
....and he stole 43 bases with only 11 CS that year. Hard to imagine what he would have turned out to be without the bad knees, he could hit in his sleep.
Plus, he was one third of the referent of my favorite baseball nickname of the past 30 years - The Three Gorditos.
Who were the other Gorditos (I like that, btw)?
ballfan: In his day? Has that ended?
you'd never guess
Does anyone know the genealogy involved here?
I'm fascinated by extreme generational gaps (like how President John Tyler, born 1790, has two living grandsons) and would love to know the details. Wikipedia calls Joe a "distant cousin", but only cites the BBRef statement that they're cousins, which I usually take to mean first cousins unless there's some form of qualification.
If they're first cousins -- If Joe's father was 60 when he Joe was born in 1975, and Joe's father's sibling was 18 when Carl was born in 1891, that's still a 42 year difference between the two siblings. That happens, but it's unusual, and even more unusual that those two siblings would then crank out kids at extremely young and old ages, respectively. Did something like this happen? Or are Joe and Carl simply second cousins, or cousins twice removed, or something equally uninteresting?
Well, that's my question. Joe Mays' BBRef page just says "cousin". His Wikipedia page says "distant cousin", but cites the BBRef page as evidence. That looks like a Wikipedia contributor made a guess that they had to be distant cousins based on the age difference, without actually knowing anything.
So I'd like to know if they are actually first cousins. Like I mentioned in #25, the guy who was President from 1841-1845 (and who was born during George Washington's first term) has two living grandchildren, so this sort of thing is possible.
C'mon man, the opening bid was Edgar and Carmelo Martinez. :-)
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