All reports out of Savannah are that this will be the l of the teams have been at odds with each other over replacing Grayson Stadium just about since the day they bought it. Reports locally are that there are no plans for the city to try and find another team to place an affiliate there, nor do they intend on funding the money needed for a new stadium. They've went through that process and voted it down.
Savannah is a tough down to get progress completed. They've always had half of their head stuff in the ground and have never tried to be anything more than a sleepy version of another Macon, Georgia rather than a smaller version of Atlanta.
I tried to build a radio tower there back in the 1990's and needed the approval of the town council. It never happened. I would have had more success putting a McDonalds in Yemen.
The fans love the Braves and the only night more than 2,000 people attend a game is "Thirsty Thursday".
I will miss nothing about going to that stadium.
It’s
no big secret that the main reason so many pitchers are having Tommy John
Surgery is that they are consistently throwing the ball harder than 92 miles
per hour.
There’s
also been a lot written that there are too many pre-high school kids being
coached to add a breaking pitch to their repertoire, putting too much excess
stress on their arms before they are fully developed. Repertoire? What is God’s
name is a grade school baseball player doing trying to develop a repertoire?
And
lastly, very few coaches early on have any concern with the pitch count of the
starters on their team, both on and off the mound. The supervision of what a
pitcher does in between his official starts is close to non-existent at most of
the small town high school levels and simply doesn’t exist before that.
So
what does all this lead to?
Well,
maybe throwing a baseball has simply become a high-risk job and ripping or
tearing tendon or muscle is just the reward for trying to do your job to the
best of your (sic) ability.
And
maybe it’s the job of a General Manager to stockpile 7-8 pitchers all capable
of being part of a major league rotation in case two or three of them go down
with a season ending injury. Losing one out of eight seems to be the norm now.
The
players with the most talent in leagues for junior high school players are
mostly pitchers. And more and more teams will be stocking their system with as
much pitching talent they can draft out of the high schools of America. Forget
college. The damage may already be done there.
I
read Steve Kettmann’s ‘Baseball Maverick’ this
past week. Things I learned about the New York Mets and Sandy Alderson included:
-the Boston Red Sox
offered IF Chih-Hsien Chaing and pitcher Alex
Wilson to the Mets for OF Carlos Beltran.
Alderson asked that a young prospect named Rougned Odor
be added to the deal, but Boston declined.
In 1965, Alderson joined
his father who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), by collecting
and coding cables from outside embassies. This job was never disclosed
publically before the printing of this book.
Alderson was one of the
Marines that stood guarding the body of President Lyndon
Johnson while it is was lying in state in the Rotunda for the general
public to view.
Under the ‘and you
thought Jeff and Fred were tight’ category, the 1979 Oakland A’s went 54-108,
had a home attendance of 306,763, had only 653 attend one home game and… owner Charles Finley didn’t attend one single game.
Alderson installed the
first weight room in baseball (Oakland).
The Mets passed on
drafting Mark McGwire in the 1984 draft,
allowing Oakland to pounce (seems the Mets felt that McGwire wouldn’t sign with
them, a feeling we’ve heard many times before).
Alderson acknowledged
that the Mets lost $70 million dollars in his first year (2011) as General
Manager.
Alderson said that the
subject of Bernie Madoff was never discussed
during his interview for the GM position. “I didn’t raise it. Maybe I should have.
The bottom line, I would have taken the job anyway”
He also said “if we sign Jose (Reyes), we are just maintaining the status quo.
We’re not improving the team.”
Alderson acknowledged
that, as late as 2013, Juan Lagares was still
considered behind Matt den Dekker as the top
center field prospect in the organization.
Alderson on Ruben Tejada: “Gradually you come to the conclusion
that Tejada is just a placeholder. He’s not a long term guy for us.”
A trade of Ike Davis to Pittsburgh was delayed because the
Pirates were pissed about how much they had to give up in the Marlon Byrd trade (I was right… many teams ran in the
other direction after both this, the Beltran for Wheeler deal, and the Dickey
trade. They didn’t want to be the next victim of Alderson’s ability to pull off
a decent trade).
Alderson on Gonzalez Germen:
“This guy went on the DL with an abscess. How do you go on the DL with
an abscess?”
I recommend the book if
you are a Mets fan. I especially recommend it if you are either a Zack Wheeler or Josh Satin fan,
because it seems like the same amount of words were spent on them that were
written about Alderson.
It was obvious that
Alderson agreed to cooperate with the author early on, but direct quotes became
very sparse by the end of the book. At that point it almost became a play by
play description of both the 2013 and 2014 season.
Still, as I said, you’ll
enjoy the insight into our beloved Gee-Em.
Zack Wheeler…
Josh Edgin… Bobby
Parnell… Vic Black… Daniel Murphy… Wilmer Flores.
Mets fans are reeling on
#MetsTwitter, blaming everybody in the organization about what’s happening in
camp this spring, but is this an exclusive problem that only the Mets seem to
have every season?
We’ve all seen all the
charts and studies about today’s pitchers that throw the ball over 92 miles per
hour Tommy John Surgery is an epidemic shares by
all 30 teams in the league and no one, I repeat, no one can make a young
pitcher throw a baseball at less speed than he is humanly possible to throw it.
TJS will happen and it will probably happen to at least one more Mets pitcher
this season. First, get over it and, second, be happy that Sandy Alderson recognizes this and decided to hold on
to his excess pitching prospects this spring. Yes, the rotation will miss
Wheeler, but Dillon Gee isn’t chopped liver.
Regarding Black, Murphy,
and Flores, you are going to have players dinged in camp if you play them.
I know it sounds stupid, but you can’t play your first regular season game with
a squad that hasn’t played a single inning of spring training baseball.
Pitchers are going to throw too hard and strain something (they don’t tear it
every time). Hitters are going to over-swing and pull something. And batters
are going to foul pitchers off their ankles regardless of how well they are in
shape.
Stuff like this happens
to every team, but the only teams that are overly affected by it are the ones
with limited depth. I believe that all but two of these guys will be back
100%
by, latest, May 1st, and the Mets have good enough secondary
players, if needed, to hold the fort down.
