A show Charles Darwin would no doubt watch. Survival of the fittest.
They keep voting people off the show. The goal is to be "the last one standing" - you either survive - or soon enough, you leave and go back to singing in the shower.
In baseball, with each franchise losing multiple minor league teams, many more marginal players have not survived and others will not last very long.
Heck, the draft is coming right soon, Paw. Some of those guys may be left in training camp, but others will be added to St. Lucie. the Mets' Low A team. Room will have to be made via cuts, I'd imagine.
There are just 4 minor league teams now for the Mets - wow, that is some sort of haircut. Come draft day, we'll see where some of those guys get assigned.
Dozens of minor league players have been jettisoned or "retired", or gone into limbo, like a Michael Paez, who is still listed as a Rumble Pony but has not played.
But there is a flip side to fewer minor league teams...the quality of the players who remain will (theoretically, at least) make for far more talented rosters.
Gone will be the hitters who can't really hit, like a Champ Stuart, who last 6 years in the Mets' minors (2013-18) back when there were a less-Darwinian seven minor league teams, Champ hit .219 with a K every 3 times up.
With 4 teams, would he have stuck around for 6 years? Nah.
(Of course, the way upper minors Mets hitters are scuffling so greatly makes one wonder about survival of the fittest).
Pitchers will just have to be BETTER against the hitters who remain, who on the whole CAN hit a lot better.
Gone are the pitchers who can't pitch, or pitch OK but aren't hard throwers, who couldn't deal with big league hitters, like a Tyler Pill, so the hitters won't get to fatten up on them anymore.
Those surviving hitters will face a steady diet of tougher pitching - just like Michael Conforto does now in the big leagues.
The minor league players will have to dig deeper - as the slope will have gotten steeper - and competition is just better.
But the best talent, the talent that ultimately makes it to the big leagues? Yes, the ones most ordinary fans care about?
It seems to me it ought to accelerate those cream-of-the-crop players' arrivals in the big leagues.
Because as you "increase resistance", as weight lifters do, the talent "muscle" will grow. The hitters won't be as easily able to delude themselves they are making OK progress if they are hitting .240 against tougher pitching - far easier to delude yourself as a .280 hitter hitting against pre-Covid diluted pitching talent.
Pete Crow Armstrong, who likely would have been in pre-season rookie ball pre-COVID, will instead face consistently better pitching - and undoubtedly adjust and grow faster.
Mets' pitchers like Tylor Megill will face consistently better hitters - learn from the challenge - and adjust faster.
A pitcher's pitches that would have gotten some weak hitters out previously will not get 2021's overall better hitters out, and it will be more obvious that their pitch quality will have to sharpen, and fast. Adjust and survive, or send out resumes.
Hopefully, a PCA or Mauricio or Baty or Alvarez or Vientos will be more greatly and consistently challenged, adjust quicker, and it will accelerate those best players to the big leagues.
Which is what all Mets fans really want.
I want the best guys to get up to the Mets as quickly as possible.
Don't you?
Get our top prospects up here with the Mets, sooner rather than later? I love that prospect.
I somehow think that if Charles Darwin was a baseball fan, he would agree. Do you?
I wonder what Darwin would have to say about Syracuse and Binghamton being a combined 3-20. Perhaps that they might become extinct species.
6 comments:
I wonder if Syracuse and Binghamton were combined into one AA team, would they be above .500?
Love that we took 2 of 3 from the Bravos but I'm wondering why Sean Reid-Foley didn't pitch last night? I agree with your theory but wonder how all this will play out and of course it would help greatly if so many weren't on the IL and years missed coupled with the COVID disaster.
Tom - all for improving the quality of minor league play but how many under the radar prospects that ended up being stars will we lose out on? Mike Piazza would not have gotten drafted had this system been in place back then, and there are many others. I see the new format is very short sighted by the MLB overlords. They need to grow and promote the game. Minor league baseball all over the US is a key way to do it. We will see how the wood bat leagues fill the void. If not it may be time for all Banana ball - all the time. (That's the Savanah Bananas - coming soon to a town near you,)
John, good point. I wonder if Piazza would have excelled in a non-official league and then latched on.
I sometimes wonder, from another perspective, if there was no NHL, NFL, and NBA, and it was just baseball, how great the talent levels would be in baseball.
Gary, many Mets in the big leagues are not surviving very well, seemingly not the fittest.
In AA and AAA, I do find myself asking, "where has all the talent gone?"
4 runs should have been enough.
Horrible inning by Peterson.
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