January, 2010 | The Baseball Zealot

Saturday links

They’ve gone through physical training. They’ve fine-tuned their hitting, pitching and fielding skills. Now, MLB rookies must go through a special class to “prepare them for life under the lights: how to live with the attention”.

In other words, don’t post incriminating photos on the Facebook and Twitter, rubes.

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A few years ago, it was hard to get any info at all on winter league action. Not so much anymore. Teams are getting ready for the Caribbean Series.

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The Pirates unveiled a statue of Bill Mazeroski at PNC. Word has it, Maz was pretty teary-eyed at the event. The statue depicts him hitting his famous homerun against the Yankees in the 1960 World Series. I’m not a Pirate fan but I’d rather have it showing his fielding prowess. Your thoughts?

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On a personal note, tomorrow is my big day at the Kiwanis Sports Trivia Championship. My friend Shawn and I are team are teaming up to hopefully going to show our sports trivia prowess (or embarrass ourselves trying). Wish us luck!

Redding thinks Mike Basick is pretty groovy

There have been rumors before but Tim Redding came right out and said it. On the radio.

He accused former teammate Mike Basick of throwing a fat pitch to Barry Bonds when Barry broke Hank Aaron’s career homerun record.

"I mean, the guy that gave it up, I never want to speak ill of anybody," Redding said. "Mike Bacsik is a stand-up guy. He’s a little quirky, but he’s a nice guy, means well. I think he wanted to give it up. And he can say what he wants in defense or whatnot, but doing the chart, I mean, every ball that Barry hit, the ball was center cut, right down the middle, fastball. You know, I think maybe inside he was thinking he was going to get a little bit more publicity. Maybe, you know, publicity and some money out of it, appearances, stuff like that. But it is what it is. I would have had no problem giving it up. The next night I actually gave up the new record. I gave up a home run [to Bonds] that night, his first at-bat, he kept one fair down the right-field line. And I was the next new record, until the next guy gave one up."

As a curious aside… F.P. Santangelo was one of the radio co-hosts interviewing Redding. Always wondered what happened to F.P.

Dawson’s gut is wrenched: he’ll be wearing an Expos cap

Is it me or do I get the sense that the Hall of Fame is choosing to place an Expo cap on Andre Dawson’s head because perhaps this might be might be the Expos’ last chance? At this point, Gary Carter is the only player in the Hall who is remotely associated with the Expos franchise.

Don’t get me wrong… there are certainly valid reasons, too. If you glance at the stats, Dawson looks pretty good with the Expos. He simply played more years, accumulated more stats. He was also arguably a better player. Six Gold Gloves. A “five-tool” player. You know, before the knee operations.

But Andre doesn’t see it that way and is perhaps a slightly surprised that he wasn’t even asked his opinion. He would prefer to wear a Cubs cap at the Cooperstown ceremonies.

"It was to my understanding they would make the determination at the consent of sitting down and discussing it with you prior to making the determination and I just thought it would carry a little bit more weight than it did." .

Obviously, his time with the Cubs meant something to him.

As well they should. His career year was his first year with Chicago when he won the MVP and became the answer to a trivia question.

It’s a routine thing we go through every year when a player is voted in to the Hall who isn’t lucky enough to play for one team his whole career (see Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn.., what did the pundits quibble about THAT year?). And maybe it would be nice if they didn’t wear a cap at all to avoid this partisan nonsense. Or maybe a nice cowboy hat.

that’ll fix ‘em.

2K Sports offers $1 mil for First Perfect Game

It’s a rather unique and impressive advertising trick. They don’t pay these guys from Marketing lotsa of dough for nothing.

It comes down to this. Video game maker 2K Sports will pay $1 million to the first person who can “throw” a perfect game in their upcoming release of their baseball simulation game, MLB 2K10.

The promise of a million buckaroos would probably boost 2K10’s sales significantly alone. Not to mention all the press and PR that the upcoming game will get from such an outlandish offer.

If you go to 2K Sports Perfect Game landing page, you won’t get many details. Only a brief one-sentence description of the contest and to “Come back soon for more details”. But the hook has been baited and the fish are already jumping.

According to Kotaku,com, this prize is most likely the largest ever for its kind. Not only that, 2K Sports probably expects someone to cash in.

The million-dollar prize is believed to be the largest ever offered for this type of contest – a skill-based challenge, rather than a random drawing. 2K Sports isn’t putting up the money believing its game is so tough that no one can meet the challenge. It fully expects someone to pitch a perfect game – retiring all 27 batters without a single one reaching base by any means – and cash in during the contest period from March 2 (the game’s date of release) and May 2.

If past versions of 2K Sports’ baseball games are any indication, then it certainly IS possible. Pitching a perfect game in 2K9 seemed to be entirely possible as evidenced by countless You Tube videos documenting them. The trick is, I assume, doing it under the rules and guidelines set out by the company. The biggest, I suppose, is that the whole thing has to be recorded. One other, as specified in the small type, the game must be played on the Xbox or PS3 (not the Wii).

Rules and guidelines aside, I think this is a marketing coup for 2K Sports. Call it thinking outside the (batter’s) box.

Hot Stove Talk

Xavier Nady to the Cubs

If healthy, let’s say that again… IF HEALTHY, I like this move by the Cubs. One, he comes at a good price (rumored at 3.3 mil guaranteed, 2.5 mil in incentives and quite honestly I don’t mind any incentives because that means he’s working for his money). Two, he hits lefty pretty well and would fit into a Kos Fuk platoon.

Finally, Ronnie would have fun with the X thing.

Rich Hill to the Cardinals

I’m doing my best to suppress laughter (7.80 ERA in 2009) because before I know it, Rich Hill will be the next comeback kid. Despite all his troubles and all his mental blocks, he IS still under 30.

And at one point, I really liked him.

Ben Sheets to the A’s

He’s going to Oakland so who cares except that my buddy Don is a Halos fan. His comment? “One year, $10 million. The Price of Poker is STEEP.” Heh, maybe. If I were an Oakland, I would be cautiously optimistic. If healthy (see Nady above) might be what the A’s need. The downside: Sheets has never won more than 13 games.

Athletics Nation certainly likes the deal.

Catching fly balls is a science (not an art)

Turns out their is a science to catching fly balls. And researchers at Brown University have the data to prove it.

For the poindexters out there, here is the compilation of their study. For the rest of us, Futurity.org parses it out for us.

The essence of the study is that fielders need to track an optical variable called optical acceleration cancellation which will help them reach the ball.

“All the fielders need to do is track this optical variable and it will lead them to a successful catch,” says William Warren, professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences at Brown and the paper’s senior author. “They don’t have to do a lot of heavy computation in their heads to predict the landing point.”

Eight varsity college baseball players and four softball players took part in the research by fielding virtual fly balls. Each wore a virtual reality-type display headset.

“Catching is clearly a perceptual motor skill that you have to learn,” Warren says, “but it does raise interesting questions about why some people are so much better at it than others.”

Catching fly balls is a science (not an art)

Turns out their is a science to catching fly balls. And researchers at Brown University have the data to prove it.

For the poindexters out there, here is the compilation of their study. For the rest of us, Futurity.org parses it out for us.

The essence of the study is that fielders need to track an optical variable called optical acceleration cancellation which will help them reach the ball.

Eight varsity college baseball players and four softball players took part in the research by fielding virtual fly balls. Each wore a virtual reality-type display headset.

“Catching is clearly a perceptual motor skill that you have to learn,” Warren says, “but it does raise interesting questions about why some people are so much better at it than others.”

Grant Desme becoming a man of the cloth

Oakland A’s prospect Grant Desme is going from Arizona Fall League MVP to the next Billy Sunday. He’s giving up the church of baseball for the priesthood.

Desme had a breakout year in 2009. Playing for the Midwest League’s Kane County Cougars and California League’s Stockton Ports, he hit 31 homeruns, stole 40 bases to go along with his .288 batting average.

Last fall, the A’s had good words to say about Desme potential:

“If he keeps putting up these kinds of numbers, it’d be hard not to bring him in [to Spring Training],” Keith Lieppman, A’s director of player development, told MLB.com in October. “There’s a lot of good things happening with him right now. At this stage, he looks like the complete package.”

Now A’s GM Billy Beane has nothing to do but to accept the inevitable. “We respect Grant’s decision and wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavors,” he grumbled.

According to the Huffington Post, Desme is quoted in 2007 as saying, “above all, my faith comes first and I dedicate myself to church.” Now, we’re seeing just how dedicated he really is. Desme will plan to enter a Catholic seminary and and says it will be a 10-year process and likens it to “re-entering the minor leagues.”

Oakland can tell themselves that they probably get along without Grant Desme (the California League is a hitters league, right?). Most likely, Desme would have been trade bait anyway.

Regardless, he would have been a player to watch. It wasn’t an easy decision for Desme to make, I’m sure.

Cubs looking at “Heart Attack” Jonny?

There are rumors out there that the Cubs are interested in free agent outfielder Jonny Gomes. They could do worse.

Gomes has plenty of potential but the knock on Heart Attack Jonny (he suffered a heart attack in 2002) is the injury issue. He hasn’t put in a full season in the seven years in the majors. To be fair, let’s call it five since he was up for just a cup of coffee for the first two.

I feel Gomes has a lot of power potential. Take the last five years. Accumulated, he’s averaged 28 homers per 500 at-bats. Yes, his batting average is a tad low. By a tad low, I mean averages like .216, .244, .182 and a whopping .267 last year. To his credit, Gomes ability to get on base with the walk raises his OBP to a more respectable career level of .330.

Last year to go along with his Hornsby-like .267, Gomes hit 20 longballs in 281 at-bats proving that he’s making improvements. The question is could he do this over an extended and more importantly, do the Cubs have a need for him.

At this point, yes, I feel the Chicago Cubs could most certainly find a use for Heart Attack Jonny. I wouldn’t expect him to play a full season if he was acquired but he would play a vital role. As a righty, he could platoon in right field and spell Soriano when (yes, when not if)he goes down.

Gomes is 29 and if he could fashion a respectable year in 2010, he could right his career. He’s been one of those players that had very interesting numbers and I’ve always liked to see what would happen if he was given a chance.

Sensationalistic Bryant Gumbel makes some accusations

Never cared for Bryant Gumbel… now I have one more reason why. He implicitly accused Jeff Bagwell, Nomar Garciaparra and Ivan Rodriguez in an open letter to Mark McGwire that he read on his show, “Real Sports”:

“In closing, guys, please feel free to share this letter with Bagwell, Nomar, Pudge and all those others who went from hitting homers to power outages overnight. Tell ’em fans are ready to accept what happened. Tell ’em we’re ready to move on. Tell ’em that most of us get it…even if they, like you, still don’t."

I’m not prepared to say one way or another if these players did or didn’t. But a person in Gumbel’s position should know better than to throw names around without proof.

Sanctimonious dolt.

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Gary Bedingfield maintains a baseball blog with a special bent. His site, Baseball in Wartime focuses on the history of baseball during wartime and baseball players who served in the military. It’s a unique idea for a blog and Gary seems to have a lot of info on the topic.

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Finally, those who follow Illinois Baseball Report know this already but we are less than one month away from regular season. If you’re talking about college baseball, that is. Usually, that’s not big news as normally teams from the north travel south to play colleges in the warmer climates.

The catch this year is that University of Illinois will be starting their season at home in chilly Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. They will be playing host to the Bradley Braves on February 20-21. It’s the first time I know about that Illinois has had a home season opener in February.

Now, if Mother Nature lets this series happen will be another thing.