Drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1967 as an 18-year-old
out of Meadow Dale High School in Dayton, Ohio, Stephen Wayne Yeager (born on November 24, 1948, in Huntington,
West Virginia) became part of the franchise’s great youth movement of the late
1960s. For a stretch of four or five years, Yeager moved through the farm
system alongside teammates like Ron Cey, Bill Buckner, Steve Garvey, Joe
Ferguson, and Davey Lopes from the Dodgers’ famed 1968 draft class. As a sign
of the type of player he would become, in 1969, while playing with the Dodgers’
Class A team in Bakersfield in June, Yeager suffered a fractured leg in a
first-inning collision at home plate with a baserunner. Unaware of the nature
of the injury, he finished the game.i It was the first of many injuries that
would add to Yeager’s reputation for toughness and solid defensive skills at
the catcher position. It was also the first of many injuries that would cut
into his playing time and allowed other players to leapfrog over him in the
Dodgers’ system. http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/69e2594b
Desmond
Jennings: First the negatives: Jennings hit .160/.258/.245 in
September, so it’s possible pitchers caught up to him after his fast start.
Moreover, Tropicana Field has ranked 29th and 30th when it comes to hitters’
parks over the past two seasons, for what that’s worth. Now the positives:
Jennings racked up 10 homers and 20 steals in just 247 at-bats last year, which
reveals quite a bit of upside. I’m not a huge fan of paying for unproven
players, but Jennings is 25 with an extensive minor league track record. Even
during his terrible September, he managed two homers and six stolen bases,
which reveals a high floor. Maybe he takes the career path of his teammate B.J.
Upton, who gives you around 20 homers and 40 steals with a poor batting
average. Or maybe he hits .290 with more of both, especially the steals, which
could approach 50-plus. When you get past the third round of drafts, few stand
out, and it becomes something of a dice roll
when it comes to hitters. Why not grab one with first-round-type upside?
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/fantasy-focus-early-targets/#more-57015
Wes
Covington (b. 1932) was a good hitting outfielder, most notably the
Braves and Phillies. Not known for his
fielding, he made two great catches in the 1957 World Series to help the Braves
beat the Yankees. He had a unique
batting stance, in which he "crouched over with bat held parallel to the
ground." He clashed with manager
Gene Mauch, who said he was prone to "pop off and pop up." fairandunbalancedblog.
Baseball Prospectus reminds us of a nice little project that Pepper Hastings, the senior editor of Beckett Baseball Monthly; set out to complete. Pepper wanted to obtain a working pay phone number for each of the 26 stadiums in Major League Baseball. This wreaks of the same kind of classic retro workflows without automation like the score-keeping of fantasy baseball leagues (I still know of one guy who does it that way for traditions sake) and All-Star voting being done solely on the paper ballots that were handed out at the ballpark. I miss early 90′s baseball, and the innocence we all had back then. There are times when I wish we didn’t have the convenience of a few taps of our smartphones to know a guy’s complete stat line for the night, how many fastballs he threw, and every team’s score in the league for the evening. I want to go back to the payphone era. http://diamondhoggers.com/2012/02/14/in-1990-pay-phones-were-our-only-bridge-to-the-live-baseball-world/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
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