Monday, December 31, 2012

Big Blue gets its win, but not help it needed as Giants miss playoffs - NYPOST


If this team had spent more time playing hard ALL the time and less time waiting to play hard until it's collective backs were pressed firmly against the wall, they would not have needed anyone's help to make the playoffs.


from the NY Post:
Big Blue gets its win, but not help it needed as Giants miss playoffs - NYPOST.com:

“There’s no shoulda, coulda, wouldas or what might have been,’’ Antrel Rolle said. “Our season ends today. Earlier in the week, I said if we had pride and we cared about our profession, we cared about being Giants, it would show on Sunday and I think it definitely showed up today.’’

'via Blog this'


You should play hard ALL the time merely as an indication that you are a professional athlete.  Even six year olds have it drilled into their heads that it's all good as long as you do your best. This team seems like a collection of guys who have either forgotten that basic lesson or are not as smart as your average six year old.

This is on the coaching staff. You can't tell me that a team that would dog it or lose focus when their backs were NOT against the wall on Sunday, did not display those characteristics the other six days of the week.

And don't give me that nonsense how you shouldn't have to motivate professional athletes. It's done ALL the time.  Wasn't part of the rationale for bringing Tim Tebow into the Jets locker room to "motivate" Mark Sanchez? Now, if we are to believe the genius QB gurus of ESPN ("Jaws" Jaworski and Trent Dilfer) Mark Sanchez would be a great QB if he wasn't pushed by Tebow (or anyone else for that matter). He's in the fish bowl that is being a QB of a NY city football team and he has "shy bladder sydrome"? And this guy is going to be a great QB? Maybe the Jets should be the first team without a backup QB. So little Marky-Mark doesn't get his itty-bitty feelings hurt?

Both teams in the Met Life Bowl need a good flush.


Sunday, December 23, 2012

Still some hope for a Brian Wilson return to the Giants


from sfgiantsbaseball.net: 
San Francisco Giants Baseball (SF Giants Rumors):

Bobby Evans, the VP of Baseball Operations for the San Francisco Giants was on KNBR today with Larry Krueger. Evans said the Giants are still over seeing Brian Wilson‘s rehab, and will continue to do so until he’s healthy or signs elsewhere. Evans also pointed out that there is still an open door for some discussions with Wilson about returning to the Giants. However, they’re still keeping their eyes open for another bullpen arm.

'via Blog this'

Friday, December 21, 2012

A Mesmerizing GIF Of R.A. Dickey's Knuckleball - Business Insider



How in the heck are you supposed to hit this thing as a batter when the catcher is just poking and hoping with the glove?

from Business Insider:
A Mesmerizing GIF Of R.A. Dickey's Knuckleball - Business Insider:

It's mesmerizing.

Here's the beautiful pitch that the Blue Jays just traded for, in slow motion:


'via Blog this'

RTV6 - Sports host Joe Staysniak: Winning coach in 107-2 high school basketball game classless - Sports Story




Classless describes it about right. There seems to be one or two notorious stories like this per year in the scholastic ranks so I guess coaches will never change.

I heard some of the parents defending the score by saying the coach "didn't try to blow the other team out". He didn't mean it? Thinks just happen? Seriously?!? At what point did he realize that he was in fact succeeding in blowing the other team out? 60-2? 70-2? 80-2? Maybe it never occurred to him and therein lies the problem.

  RTV6 - Sports host Joe Staysniak: Winning coach in 107-2 high school basketball game classless - Sports Story:
"I don't know how as a coach you can live with yourself allowing something like that to happen," Staysniak said. "Why not go down and pass the ball 10 times. Let's work on the other aspects of our game."
In a statement Wednesday night, the Bloomington South athletic department defended the win.
 "The girls on both teams played hard and continued to compete the entire game. To do anything less by either team would have been demeaning," the statement read. "Arlington came out and worked on their player development, as did we. The longstanding reputation of our program and coach is one that would validate this information."
'via Blog this'

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

New York Jets pick Greg McElroy, stick it to Tim Tebow - ESPN New York


In hindsight, a bad marriage. Headed for divorce court. It seems as if perhaps the Jets may have just been playing "keep away from the Pats" with Tebow and were willing to waste a roster spot to do so. Maybe Tim should have headed for Jacksonville, maybe the Pats would have been better even if he would be a clear and distant #2.

New York Jets pick Greg McElroy, stick it to Tim Tebow - ESPN New York:

Maybe Ryan is afraid Tebow would go 2-0 against San Diego and Buffalo and make him feel silly for sticking with Sanchez. Maybe Ryan is afraid a return of Timsanity would make him look worse than he looked that November night in Denver he sent the lead-footed Smith on a fateful blitz.

'via Blog this'

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

MLB seeking to ID at-risk players in wake of Jovan Belcher murder-suicide, sources say - ESPN




Profiling, but in a good way. Sadly, steps like this may be way overdue. Just as in the Ken Caminiti debacle, it frustrates me to know that in such a close, family-like situation like a locker room or a clubhouse, that brothers didn't know the pain and stress that fellow brothers were going through or didn't take the steps necessary to mitigate the harm before the situation spiralled out of control.

As we've seen with the Dallas Cowboys DWI situation, there can be perfectly sane, cogent measures put in place to "help" players avoid trouble, but they are overridden by suspicion that the "help" will be used against them .

from ESPN:
MLB seeking to ID at-risk players in wake of Jovan Belcher murder-suicide, sources say - ESPN:

The events surrounding Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, who killed girlfriend Kasandra Perkins before shooting himself, motivated Major League Baseball to gather information from the tragedy for behavioral profiles that theoretically enable teams to identify players who may need assistance or intervention, according to sources.
Data shows that 80 MLB players or former players have committed suicide, 54 from self-inflicted gun wounds.
 Sources say Belcher had been engaged in an employee assistance program six to eight weeks before his death.
 The leagues are sharing information and using FBI behavioral analysis in an effort to compile a better profile of a player or former player in trouble.

'via Blog this'

Santiago Casilla signs three-year deal - McCovey Chronicles



Maybe not a wild overpayment, but an overpayment nonetheless. Comparing it to other overpayments to make it seem reasonable doesn't help my psyche but the fact that it's not my money does help a bit. If it hamstrings the roster because Santy gets fat and happy and his productivity declines, then it's a problem. But this guy has been brutally effective for quite some time now, so pay the man.

from McCovey Chronicles:
Santiago Casilla signs three-year deal - McCovey Chronicles:

It's not a wild overpayment. Heck, it's not an overpayment at all. Casilla was going to make that much in his last year of arbitration according to Matt Swartz, and this buys out two years of free agency. Consider that Jonathan Broxton got $21 million over three years, or that Brandon League got four years and $27.5 million. Casilla's deal is almost exactly what Brandon Lyon signed for three years ago, and Casilla is much better than Lyon was. This is just what relievers are signing for. Rafael Soriano made $11 million just last year.

'via Blog this'

UPDATE:

just for perspective.

from ESPN:

MLB average salary up 3.8 percent to $3.2 million - ESPN:

It Pays (A Lot) To Play

The average baseball salaries of the last 10 years, as compiled by the Major League Baseball Players Association, and the minimum salary:

Year Minimum Average
2003 $300,000 $2,372,189
2004 $300,000 $2,313,535
2005 $316,000 $2,476,589
2006 $327,000 $2,699,292
2007 $380,000 $2,824,751
2008 $390,000 $2,925,679
2009 $400,000 $2,996,106
2010 $400,000 $3,014,572
2011 $414,000 $3,095,183
2012 $480,000 $3,213,47



Sunday, December 16, 2012

Are We Creating a Culture of Moral Misfits?




Trying to make sense out of the senseless atrocity in Newtown, CT seems so futile at times. But this is the operative question that seems to come out of all events like this one or some derivative thereof:
"Are we creating a culture or moral misfits?"



from godfatherpolitics.com
Are We Creating a Culture of Moral Misfits?:

Our nation has a deep moral problem brought on by a belligerent secular worldview. And it’s not just religious people who have seen its impact. Yale Law Professor Arthur Allen Leff (1935–1981) put it this way:
“We are never going to get anywhere (assuming for the moment that there is somewhere to get) in ethical or legal theory unless we finally face the fact that, in the Psalmist’s words, there is no one like unto the Lord. . . . The so-called death of God turns out not to have been His funeral; it also seems to have affected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon final authoritative, extrasystemic premises.”
 Put more simply, with God out of the picture, “everything is up for grabs.”[1]

'via Blog this'



This is the best response I could find and it flows out of the lessons we did not learn from Columbine and the testimony of the father of Rachel Scott, one of the students killed at Columbine.

Darrel Scott's speech to Congress:
http://www.americaspartynews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=3621

On that day, many students and teachers and administrators found themselves in gross violation of the Law of the Land handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1962 -- one of many atrocities committed by this body -- and that is to remove prayer from the public schools.

I guarantee you on that day in 1999 at Columbine there were many who violated the law and asked for God's help openly and vainly. And I guarantee there were many in Newtown, CT who prayed in vain for help to a God they do not know very well and would not recognize if they met Him. They may as well have been praying to Santa or the Easter Bunny.

We have done of great job of bringing about The Naked Public Square (1984) that then-Lutheran pastor Richard John Niehaus warned us about (Niehaus subsequently became a Catholic priest in 1991).

(as an aside Niehaus was also on the correct side of the abortion (right to life) issue as well, standing in direct contrast to Chicago Cardinal (Chicago Values Suck) Bernadin when he compared the pro-life struggle to the civil rights movement of the 60's.)

It was a mistake to isolate abortion "from other issues of the sacredness of life" and to allow politicians to hide behind the skirt of the "seamless garment" argument provided to Catholic politicians by Bernadin. 
According to writer Joseph Sobran, "the seamless garment has turned out to be nothing but a loophole for hypocritical Catholic politicians. If anything", he adds, "it has actually made it easier for them than for non-Catholics to give their effective support to legalized abortion—that is, it has allowed them to be inconsistent and unprincipled about the very issues that Cardinal Bernardin said demand consistency and principle".[11][12]
Regarding the Church's position on the death penalty, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) wrote in 2004 that Catholics could have a legitimate diversity of opinions on the matter, but not on abortion or euthanasia.[13]

from wikipedia.org:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Allen_Leff

Arthur Allen Leff (1935–1981) was a professor of law at Yale Law School who is best known for a series of articles examining whether there is such a thing as a normative law or morality. Leff answers this question in the negative and follows the consequences to their logical conclusions.

In these works Leff attempts to directly address whether a normative morality can exist without God. [2] Leff answers the question in the negative. Leff states that absent an ultimate authority figure (i.e. God) handing down moral laws from on-high there is no reason for any person to prefer one set of behavior identified as "moral" to another. Leff terms this "the Grand Sez Who." In particular, it is impossible to resolve the conflict between the rights of the individual and the power of the collective, even though much of the time we can pretend that, for instance, the Constitution tells us where to draw the line. There are bound to be cases where we are left on our own, with no authoritative referee; there is no "brooding omnipresence in the sky", in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., whom Leff quotes approvingly.
 Leff was an agnostic but his writings have been influential on Christian discussions of morality in the modern Era. Phillip E. Johnson has suggested that Leff's work is really a critique of the God is dead argument. [3] Johnson argues that the presence of evil in the world is evidence that there is an absolute morality which requires an absolute authority. Other Christian scholars have also applied Leff's critique to secular arguments for a normative morality. [4]


Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law, 1979 Duke L.J. 1229 (1979)
http://inklingz.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/unspeakable-ethics-unnatural-law-duke-law-journal3.pdf

Leff states as follows in the closing of UE, UL:



All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves, and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why any thing should. Only if ethics were something unspeakable by us could law be unnatural, and therefore unchallengeable. As things stand now, everything is up for grabs. Nevertheless:
Napalming babies is bad.
Starving the poor is wicked.
Buying and selling each other is depraved.
Those who stood up and died resisting Adolf HitlerJoseph StalinIdi Amin, and Pol Pot —and General Custer too— have earned salvation.
Those who acquiesced deserve to be damned.
There is in the world such a thing as evil.
[All together now:] Sez who?
God help us.
.

Basically, there seems to be two types of responses around the water cooler to events like this. There are those who respond "I don't understand how this type of thing could happen..." and those who respond "I not only understand why it happens, I'm only glad it doesn't happen more...". On one side are the secular progressives who worship at the shrine of moral relativism. On the other side are the evangelical conservatives and the religious understand moral absolutism even if they don't practice it to perfection in their own lives.

When we live in a country whose laws (morality) do not respect life much at the beginning or late stages, why do we even question why nobody has much respect for the lives (the ultimate human right -- life) of others during the middle or so-called productive stages?

I won't even discuss some of the immoral institutions (most reside in or are glorified by HOLLYWOOD) that totally disrespect the lives and dignity of human beings in the middle stages of life. So we do pretty much of a good job of shitting on the lives and dignity of life throughout all of its stages.

And then we wonder why incidents like Newtown and Columbine are prevalent in our society, in our culture? And we consistently point fingers in all the wrong directions. We are very well practiced at doing the wrong thing and instead of admitting our mistake and changing course -- we just continue down the same lost course, only faster and harder. The Lost Pilot Effect. (Lost pilot” effect: If the correct strategy is not known or applicable, people will just do “more” of the wrong thing.)

for a more secular explanation of why we are where we are (LOST):
http://teaching.p-design.ch/mdm07/presentations/managerial_decision_making07_13_Retrospection.pdf

C'mon man. We can do better than this. We're smarter than this.

Unfortunately, for now my response to the question "Are we creating a culture of moral misfits?" is an unqualified "Yes!!"

We have become Amoral Nation. That slippery slope is a real SOB!











Friday, December 14, 2012

PAXALLES: Racist ESPN Analyst Rob Parker: RGII A Cornball Brother



ESPN -- setting back race relations a decade at a time.

When are idiots like Parker and Whitlock / Costas going to stick to sports and leave the social commentary alone? They step on land mines and display their lack of depth and intellect every time. (Note: I know Costas and Whitlock are not employed by ESPN)

Whitlock could have picked a from a number of "cultures" to pin the blame for the Kansas City tragedy and he picked the gun culture? Seriously fool!?! And Costas runs with it after apparently skimming the article?!? And he's portrayed as an intellectual giant (mostly by self) in the world of sports?!?

Have they never heard of the phrase " Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt"? 

This is what gets manufactured in Detroit nowadays. Continue the decline into oblivion Mr. Parker, preach on!!

It's on awfulannouncing.com for good reason.

from PAXALLES via ESPN's First Take:
PAXALLES: Racist ESPN Analyst Rob Parker: RGII A Cornball Brother:

ESPN analyst Rob Parker accused Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III AKA RGIII of being a "cornball brother" - basically not black enough.

'Because that's how I - I want to find out about him. I don't know because I keep hearing these things. We all know he has a white fiance,' said Parker.

'There was all this talk about he's a Republican. There's no information at all - I'm just trying to dig deeper into why he has an issue.

'Because we did find out with Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods was like, 'I got black skin, but don't call me black.' People got a little wondering about him early on.'

'via Blog this'

Kane County Experience Should Benefit Cubs' Prospects


Right in our own backyard. This should be good for the Cubs of the future. These guys will be playing right in the backyard of the team executives and this roster should be loaded with guys who will carry the team to whatever success they may have in the next decade.

Soler and Almora alone should be worth the price of admission, so if this team has any pitching at all.....sounds like the Cubs most years, doesn't it?

Kane County Experience Should Benefit Cubs' Prospects:

While the 2013 minor league rosters won't be set until the end of spring training, Johnson could be managing a team led by top prospects Albert Almora and Jorge Soler, giving Cubs’ fans a glimpse of the future in their own backyard.

“It’s good for these kids that they’re this close to the city,” Johnson said. “It should be a great experience all of for them.”

'via Blog this'

I feel gritty...



Interesting Test.


Your grit score is: 3.88

You are grittier than at least 70% of the US population.



GIANTS NOTES: Giants bring Torres back; Affeldt happy with offseason plan | Giants Extra



GIANTS NOTES: Giants bring Torres back; Affeldt happy with offseason plan | Giants Extra:

Torres hit .286 with a .382 OBP against left-handers last year, so he’s a good bet to be your early platoon partner for Gregor Blanco. Is it powerful? No. But they’re both character guys who play a solid outfield, have some speed and can help out in center and right if needed. Given the dollar figure and the fact that the Giants already are over the $140 million mark and still need another reliever, it’s likely that this is their outfield move.

'via Blog this'

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Zack Greinke signs with Dodgers - McCovey Chronicles


The Dodgers have officially become the Evil Empire West.

Not to be an insensitive jerk, but could a guy with a previous history of social anxiety disorder have picked a worse destination than Los Angeles? Maybe New York? Can you spell Ed Whitson to the Yankees?

Then again there is this to look forward to:

from the McCovey Chronicles:
Zack Greinke signs with Dodgers - McCovey Chronicles:

If there had to be a new financial bully in baseball, I'm almost glad it's the Dodgers. The odds are they won't win the World Series every year, and when they don't, it will be glorious. The Yankees winning in 2009 was annoying, but think of all the years we've had the opportunity to laugh at them when they failed. That's like a special gift.

The Dodgers are giving us that gift, so long as they don't win the stupid thing.

'via Blog this'

Saturday, December 08, 2012

Kaizen - LTAD and CS4L (Istvan Balyi) | canadiansportforlife.ca



Dr. Balyi's LTAD approach is IMO as good an overall outline for how sports, physical activity and athletic development should be in this country. And he is right next door. So it's not like we can ignore it or pooh-pooh it because it comes from some god-forsaken communist country. Maybe this time we'll consider the suggestions on their merits more than we consider the source and make some needed improvements "south of the border".

  • Canadian Sport for Life (CS4L) is a broad based movement to change the role and function of sport in Canadian society.
  •  Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) is a structured pathway that follows CS4L principles to optimize the development of our athletes at all ages and stages of their development.
  •  Both CS4L and LTAD represent a paradigm shifts in the way we manage and deliver sport and athlete training in Canada.


Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) - Canadian Sport for Life (CS4L):
Kaizen - LTAD and CS4L (Istvan Balyi) | canadiansportforlife.ca:

Kaizen - LTAD and CS4L (Istvan Balyi)
March 12, 2012
 In the spirit of Kaizen, Continuous Improvement, we are looking to improve Canadian Sport for Life and Long-Term Athlete Development. With that in mind I announced new and improved 10 Key Factors and expanding the 5 S’s to 10 S’s at the 2012 Canadian Sport for Life Summit.

 The new 10 Key Factors are:

  1. Physical Literacy
  2. Specialization
  3. Developmental Age
  4. Sensitive Periods
  5. Physical, Mental, Cognitive, and Emotional Development
  6. Periodization
  7. Calendar Planning for Competition
  8. System Alignment
  9. Excellence Takes Time
  10. Kaizen 


In addition to the original 5 S’s (Stamina/Enduarance, Strength, Speed, Skill and Suppleness/Flexibility), there are now an additional 5 S’s:
  1. Structure / stature
  1. (p)Sychology
  1. Sustenance
  1. Schooling
  1. Socio-Cultural
With these additional 5 Ss, LTAD now contribute better to the holistic development of the athlete.



'via Blog this'



Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) pdf file:
Canadian Sports for Life (CS4L) Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) and Kaizen (Continuous Improvement)



Ten Key Factors:

Ten Key Factors | canadiansportforlife.ca:

Ten Key Factors

Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) is based on sport research, coaching best practices, and scientific principles. LTAD expresses these principles, research, and practices as 10 Key Factors essential to athlete development.

To optimize the development of our athletes, we need to take advantage of the best sport science and best practices in coaching and training. Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) does this by codifying important elements of sport science and coaching practices into the 10 Key Factors of LTAD:


  1. 10-Year Rule
  2. FUNdamentals
  3. Specialization
  4. Developmental Age
  5. Trainability
  6. Physical, Mental, Cognitive and Emotional Development
  7. Periodization
  8. Competition Planning
  9. System Alignment and Integration
  10. Continuous Improvement

Along with sport science and coaching, the 10 Key Factors include broader principles behind the way we organize and manage sport.  For example, competition scheduling to optimize athlete development, organizational alignment of different groups and agencies that make up the “sport system”, and the philosophy of Continuous Improvement so we always work to make our science, coaching, and system of athlete development better.

'via Blog this'


Coaching Association of Canada publishes Long-Term Athlete Development for Parents document | News | canadiansportforlife.ca:

Many parents are looking for answers to explain what is right for their child when it comes to athletic development.  As a coach, you need something that will help explain the facts in an easy, accurate, and user-friendly manner.  The Coaching Association of Canada, in coordination with Canadian Sport for Life, has created the following document: “Long-Term Athlete Development Information for Parents” to help coaches educate the parents of the children in their programs.



This document provides an overview of the LTAD model, describing each of the seven stages in easy-to-understand language.  It gives solid and concrete advice on what parents can do to encourage their child’s current physical, and athletic development and suggests tips to help them assist their child as they move into the later stages of development. This handy tool is something coaches will want to have readily available at all times to share with parents.  We encourage all CAC Partners to share the following link with their Learning Facilitators, member clubs, coaches and parents.

'via Blog this'


LTAD for Parents Document:
http://www.coach.ca/files/CAC_LTADFORPARENTS_JAN2012_EN.pdf

We're #17....in Education



I feel your pain!!!

And the knee-jerk responses / solutions from both sides of the aisle are not doing this generation any justice at all.


Pearson Report Finds US Schools to be Just Average

from educationnews.com

http://www.educationnews.org/international-uk/pearson-report-finds-us-schools-to-be-just-average/
A new report by Pearson finds that among the education systems of 40 developed nations around, the world the United States ranks squarely in the middle at #17. Among the countries topping the list are the perennial front-runners South Korea and Finland. In its report, Pearson doesn’t just seek to order the nations based on [...]



This is a great report as far as identifying the issues that have led us to where we are. And like the great Bill Parcells says, "You are what your record says you are". And currently, we are # 17. Middle of the pack amongst comparable nations. Mediocre. The N.Y. Mets of education worldwide. That is unacceptable!!


Lessons in country performance in education

http://thelearningcurve.pearson.com/the-report



When a smart guy like Bill Gates cannot make smaller school size (and by extension smaller class sizes) the answer, then that in and of itself won't work. Although his letter on the topic after he gave up the fight is a pretty good outline that folks who are serious about fixing the problem can use to make some real progress.

This is from 2008. And we are still slipping.

Bill Gates - A Forum on Education in America

November 11, 2008
Prepared remarks by Bill Gates, co-chair and trustee

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/bill-gates-2008-education-forum-speech.aspx

Actually some of his wife Melinda's comments (linked) and suggestions were as good or better than Bill's:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/speeches-commentary/Pages/melinda-gates-2008-education-forum-speech.aspx
Our foundation has a vision of a thriving post secondary market of community colleges, four-year colleges, online options, and for-profit institutions that would compete for students on the basis of price, value, and convenience–with a premium paid when a student completes a degree that means something in the workplace.
In the next several years, our work will focus on two-year colleges. These are the schools that enroll the majority of low-income students. Most community colleges have open admission, low tuition rates, and with 1,200 of them around the country, most people live near one. Community colleges have untapped potential for getting students the credentials they need to earn a living wage.
 We will take this cause to business leaders, labor leaders, civil rights leaders, and do everything we can to unify these voices in a call for change. And we’ll keep coming back, again and again, to call for more.
No country has the resources to guarantee a livelihood for people who aren’t willing to work hard. But nothing is more damaging to a country than to have millions of young people with no opportunities. In any society, there will always be some who perform well and others who don’t.
 But in a strong society, those differences are determined by people’s talent and energy and not by the income of their parents. 
That’s why we’re committed to this work—we know of no better way to expand opportunity and make the future brighter for millions of Americans.


Higher pay would work, bit only in combination with removal of lower producing slugs who don't really want to be in the profession. When it is 50 times easier for an M.D. to lose his/her license than it is for a teacher to lose their certificate -- when common-sense indicates the ratio probably should be in the reverse -- then clearly something is wrong with the system. And it needs to be fixed!!!

Time for both sides to put some of their pride and prejudices aside (biases, preconceived notions, whatever) and do what is right for the kids.




Timothy Dalrymple wonders whether education reform should be one of the great objectives for American Christians in the twenty-first century. Taking up that cause will require overcoming the intransigence of the teachers’ unions:
Try firing an ineffective teacher.  Roughly 1 in 50 doctors lose their medical license.  Only 1 in 2500 teachers ever lose their teaching credentials.  Process that for a moment.  It’s much easier to become a teacher than a doctor, yet teachers are fifty times less likely than doctors to be removed from the profession.  One of the statistics cited in Waiting for Superman, an extraordinary documentary on the crisis of American public education, is that only 61 out of Illinois’ 876 school districts have attempted to fire even one teacher, and only 38 of those districts were successful.  The tenure system — designed to give the most accomplished university professors the freedom to advance new ideas in their teaching and writing without fear of reprisal from their employers, and gained only after many years and rigorous examination — has become an iron shield protecting ineffective teachers who earned their tenure after two years.  Good teachers are a national treasure.  Bad teachers who refuse to change their ways are leeches on the system who cannot be removed and who miseducate our children into truancy and joblessness.






from ibtimes.com

US 17th In Global Education Ranking; Finland, South Korea Claim Top Spots

A report that accompanied the rankings suggested that promoting a culture that is supportive of education is more important than the amount of money invested.

The report said that the success of Asian nations in the rankings reflects the complex impact each society's attitude toward education has in defining its effectiveness.

“More important than money, say most experts, is the level of support for education within the surrounding culture. Although cultural change is inevitably complex, it can be brought about in order to promote better educational outcomes,” the report said.

The study also underscored the importance of good teachers in improving educational output.

“Having a better [teacher] is statistically linked not only to higher income later in life but to a range of social results, including lower chances of teenage pregnancy and a greater tendency to save for their own retirement,” the report noted.

However, there was no agreed-upon list of traits to define or identify an excellent teacher or recipe for obtaining one, the report said.


In general, the teaching profession commands greater respect in nations with successful education systems than in those that do not. However, higher salaries accomplish little by themselves, according to the report.
The study suggested that countries with a greater choice of schools provided better educational outcomes than those that offered fewer choices of schools.

“For-profit private education is providing students in some of the least-developed areas of the world an alternative to poor state provision and showing the potential benefits of choice and accountability,” the study said, adding that parental pressure on educational institutes for better performance should not be seen as impediments.

'via Blog this'

Best Players After the Dead Ball Era with under 400 HR's



This is a fantastic list and a great point by Arne Christensen over at Seamheads.com . Are any of these guys accomplishments diminished by the steroid era? In some ways, they may be enhanced, no pun intended.

from Seamheads.com

Some of the Best Players After the Dead Ball Era With Under 400 Career Homers


http://seamheads.com/2012/12/07/some-of-the-best-players-after-the-dead-ball-era-with-under-400-career-homers/

The players who are in the 500-home run club used to be guaranteed a place in the Hall of Fame. The offensive boom of the last two decades cheapened membership some, but they’re still guaranteed either fame or notoriety, and sometimes both. This list of retired players who hit mostly or entirely after the dead ball’s extinction, but never got near 500 homers, is meant to illustrate a few of the alternative paths all-time greats have taken to become extraordinary offensive forces.
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Al Kaline 399. My sense is that Kaline is one of the least famous players on this list. He drew a lot of walks and hit for consistent power, but never got to even 30 homers in a year, or won an MVP. He was a consistently great player, always just a hair behind the very best players of his time. His 23 assists in 1958 are probably the most spectacular number of his career.
Johnny Bench 389. He and Berra could well be the two best catchers ever. Bench hit for his best average, .309, in ’81, a decade after he’d last come near the .300 plateau. And that was the one year after 1967 when he failed to reach double-digits in homers.
Joe DiMaggio 361. Dimaggio’s the only man on this list to have his homer total discounted by war service. He was injured much of his career as well. Joe’s best year wasn’t 1941 with the 56-game hitting streak but 1939, the year Lou Gehrig left baseball. His relatively low counting statistics, hurt by missing 33 games early in the season, obscured a .381 batting average and .671 slugging percentage.
Yogi Berra 358. Berra ranks just behind DiMaggio for home runs. He somehow managed to hit 10 triples in 1948, more than a fifth of his career total. More importantly, he hit 20 or more homers in 13 straight years for the Yankees, and won three MVP awards while doing so. For the years from ’36 through ’63 when Berra and/or DiMaggio were on the field for the Yankees, they won the pennant 20 out of 25 years, and the World Series 15 out of 25 years.
George Brett 317. I believe Brett is the only player ever to lead his league in batting average in three different decades: 1976, 1980, and 1990. Despite getting the Gold Glove and leading the A.L. in slugging percentage and OPS while playing for the World Series champions in ’85, Brett wasn’t voted MVP. In 1979 he had 20 or more triples, homers, and doubles, a very rare slugging trifecta.
Rogers Hornsby 301. Hornsby hit for over a .400 aggregate average in the 1921 through ’25 seasons. He was dominating the N.L. at the same time Ruth was dominating the A.L. His last great year was ’29 with the Cubs: he had nearly 300 runs scored and RBIs combined, garnered an MVP, and posted a .679 slugging percentage. But after that he played in at least part of 8 more seasons while hitting only 24 homers. Hornsby was managing the teams he played for, and they were usually bad. Given that he usually played just a few games a season, you wonder if sometimes Hornsby looked out and thought he could do better than the players he had, so put himself in the lineup.
Rickey Henderson 297. Rickey’s grasp of the all-time steals record is about as complete as Nolan Ryan’s grasp of the all-time strikeouts record. It’d take 50 steals a year for 28 years to come close to his mark of 1406 steals. In the same way, 200 strikeouts a year for 28 years would put a very old pitcher within 114 of Ryan’s record. That’s one of the parallels that make it appropriate for Rickey to have been Ryan’s 5000th strikeout.
Joe Morgan 268. Morgan was the ’70s version of what Rickey Henderson would be in the ’80s: combining solid batting averages, a hundred or more walks each year, solid power, and a lot of effective base stealing. And like Rickey, he became a vagabond late in his career, playing for five teams in his last six seasons, with diminished speed and power and averages, but still a great ability to draw walks. In fact, Morgan played with Rickey in his last year, 1984, also the last year of Rickey’s first tour with the A’s. And of course they’re both products of Oakland, although Morgan was born in Texas.
Robin Yount 251. Yount came up with the Brewers at age 18 in 1974 and retired after the ’93 season, having stayed with the Brewers throughout his career. His peak homer year was hitting 29 with the slugging Brewers of ’82, still the best Brewers team ever. He got much less All-Star recognition than his longtime teammate, Paul Molitor.
Roy Campanella 242. Campy squeezed his 242 homers into just 10 years, all of them with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1953 he put up an offensive performance, with 42 homers, 142 RBIs, a .395 OBP, and .611 slugging percentage, that only Johnny Bench in 1970 (and perhaps Mike Piazza in 1997) has matched among N.L. catchers. Campy was the N.L. MVP in ’51, ’53, and ’55. After having his performance slump in ’56 and ’57, his career ended because of an auto wreck in the offseason before the Dodgers went to Los Angeles. But, he followed them to California and died in the L.A. suburb of Woodland Hills in 1993, still paralyzed from that wreck.
Roberto Clemente 240. Roberto and Kaline were counterparts for nearly all their careers, two men patrolling right field very effectively from the mid-’50s to the early ’70s for teams in industrial cities less than 300 miles from each other. Clemente won one more World Series. Like Kaline, Clemente never hit 30 homers in a year, but over his career had slightly lower offensive numbers and was a slightly worse base stealer. He does beat Kaline in assists, 266 to 170, though he also committed 140 errors to Kaline’s 73.
Paul Molitor 234. Molitor’s peak power years came in 1993 and ’94, when he was past 35. And from ’93 through ’95 he managed to get 54 steals in 58 tries. So like Lou Brock, he did his best base-stealing late in his career. Molitor was not quite 22 when he came up to the Brewers in ’78, so his debut took more time than Yount’s. But he made up for that by staying in the big leagues quite a bit longer. By the way, ex-Brewers slugger Rob Deer ranks just behind Molitor with 230 homers in his career, while striking out 1409 times. Does anyone know whether Deer has the highest ratio of strikeouts to home runs in a career for any slugger?
Pete Rose 160. Rose’s homer count is almost astonishingly low given his 4256 hits. After 1971, he didn’t get more than 10 homers in a single year. In fact, Rose’s power numbers don’t look too different from Cobb’s, except that Cobb hit many more triples. But, Rose has the record for most times on base with 5929. Bonds is second with 5599, but after Bonds, you have to go down to seventh, Hank Aaron, to find another player on the list who hit 500 homers.
Lou Brock 149. Brock’s speed and steals made up for at least part of his relative lack of power. I used to think Brock was a pretty weak hitter, but he hit 21 homers in ’67 and registered double digit homer totals in six of seven years at one point. Put his 3023 hits together with 938 steals, and you can overlook Brock’s lack of walks. Brock leads all players on this list in career strikeouts with 1730, 20 more than Mickey Mantle.
Jackie Robinson 137. He is not famous for home runs. Robinson’s peak offensive year was 1949, with a .342 average, .528 slugging percentage, and over 120 RBIs and runs scored. His abilities on the base paths seem to overshadow the fact that he drew a lot of walks. In fact, the offensive parallels behind himself and Joe Morgan and Rickey Henderson are hard to ignore.
Tony Gwynn 135. After peaking in 1987 with a .370 average and 56 steals, Gwynn’s numbers dropped off a bit, until he hit .394 in ’94. His 119 RBIs in ’97 compare to just one other season with more than 72 RBIs.
Wade Boggs 118. Boggs’ 24 homers in ’87 were a freakish 20 percent of his career total. Gwynn’s counterpart as the leading hitter for average in the late ’80s, Wade did hit 40 or more doubles every year from ’85 through ’91, many of them banging off the Green Monster.
Paul Waner 113. Big Poison spent the first 10 years of his career putting up double-digit triples numbers, but he never got more than 15 homers in a year, playing for the Pirates usually, in the ’20s and ’30s. His 3152 hits average out to 200 hits per season.
George Sisler 102. About the only A.L. counterpart to Ruth for offensive prowess in the early ’20s was Sisler, who spent 1920 through ’22 hitting around .400 for the St. Louis Browns, stealing 40 or so bases each year, and hitting 18 triples each of the three years. He must have been the best player the Browns ever had. An optic nerve infection in ’23 knocked him out for the entire year. When he came back in 1924 his numbers fell off somewhat even as the rest of the league was increasing its offensive production. He still had 2812 hits, 257 of them in 1920, and that got Sisler posthumous attention in ’04, when Ichiro was challenging and then breaking that record for hits in a single season. Of course, like Hornsby, Sisler played part of his career before 1920. So they both missed out on a few homers playing in those dead ball years.
Rod Carew 92. Of all the batters with at least 3000 hits, Carew hit the fewest of them for homers. His 92 are just one more than Bob Brenly, six fewer than Tim McCarver, and two fewer than Tony Fernandez. Carew must be one of the very few superb long-time players in the last 90 years with more triples than homers, 112 to 92. He’s certainly one of the greatest players to never get into the World Series.

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Cubs to Sign Nate Schierholtz


Nate the Great is a Cub!! If he gets 500 AB here, he should hit 20 HR's. Good deal for the Cubbies.

from mlbtraderumors.com:
Cubs to Sign Nate Schierholtz:

The Cubs agreed to a one-year deal with outfielder Nate Schierholtz, tweets ESPN's Jerry Crasnick.  The deal is worth $2.25MM with $500K in incentives, adds Crasnick.  Schierholtz, 29 in February, was non-tendered by the Phillies last week.  He's represented by Lapa/Leventhal.

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Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Marco Scutaro returns for three years, $20 million - McCovey Chronicles



The boys are back in town, the boys are back in town!!!

Looks like the Giants are going to defend with most of the same cast as last year intact. Good news. Three years may a stretch, but if he fades he becomes a higher priced, slightly older Theriot. Given what Victorino received from the Red Sox, this and the Pagan deal may seem like relative bargains in very short order.

from the McCovey Chronicles:
Marco Scutaro returns for three years, $20 million - McCovey Chronicles:

"YOU DON'T LIVE IN A WORLD WITH ABSOLUTES, YOU SPOILED PERSON. This is not a deal to hate without hesitation. This is not a deal to love unconditionally. This news that the Giants have re-signed Marco Scutaro for three years and $20 million is quite the wonderland of ambiguity."

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Tuesday, December 04, 2012

South Florida Bulls fire Skip Holtz after third year - ESPN




This is the way college football is going. The culture is geared towards a "win NOW or get out" mentality. It used to be a head coach could count on four years to turn a program around -- a full roster of "your own recruits", but no longer.

While I respect that Bill McCartney knows more about the internals of Colorado football than I'll never know, the real crime here may not be as much the quick hook ( 2 years for Embree versus three for Holtz ) as the fact that -- other than Ty Willingham -- they never appear to get the second chance to coach another program.




from the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/28/football-bill-mccartney-_n_2203560.html

"I heard the chancellor say it doesn't matter what color Jon Embree is. To me, that offends every person of color out there. It's as if to suggest that everything is done on a fair scale. It's not done on a fair scale. Men of color don't have the same priveleges or same opportunities and they are under greater pressure when they step in. For some reason our culture has dialed up something that causes us to have less confidence in people of color. I'm telling you, this guy can match wits with any white guy out there. This Embree guy is the real deal. He was doing it the right way."
CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard said McCartney was misrepresenting the chancellor. Hilliard said DiStefano never said it doesn't matter what color Embree is.
"The chancellor said we didn't hire Jon Embree because he's African-American and we didn't fire him because he's African-American," Hilliard said.


Willingham seemed to get a raw deal at Notre Dame a few years back. At least he got a chance to redeem himself elsewhere. Many coaches relate how they learned so much, made their mistakes the first time through, that they became much better, more valuable coaches the second go-round.

That may be where the real crime lies. White coaches get on that retread merry-go-round and crowd out opportunities for black coaches. The numbers are SLOWLY getting better for first-time opportunities, but are virtually non-existent for second chances.

And I'm not sure how you  cure that one. Shining the light of day on it helps a bit. May not help Embree, but others down the road. McCartney's endorsement of Embree normally should be enough to help almost any football coach get another gig, but you have to ask yourself how much currency his endorsement has outside of say the Boulder, CO area.

Good luck to Coach Embree. He deserved a better shot to prove himself at Colorado and given McCartney's passionate support seems worthy of finding another place where he can prove himself.

You would think a mid-major type program looking to break through would be a natural landing spot. Or maybe a USF. I hear they may have an opening.

from ESPN.com
South Florida Bulls fire Skip Holtz after third year - ESPN:

"Skip Holtz has been fired after three seasons at South Florida, sources said Sunday.

Holtz was 16-21 at USF, including 5-16 in Big East play. This season, the Bulls, picked second in the Big East's preseason poll, went 3-9 (1-6 in the Big East). It was the worst season in USF's 16-year history.

In its last 16 Big East games under Holtz, USF was 2-14.

Holtz and Jim Leavitt are the only coaches in USF history and both were fired -- but for different reasons."

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Giants, Pagan agree to 4-year deal - Yahoo! Sports



Sabean and the Giants are busy checking off most of the post-season boxes necessary to bring back the same crew to defend the title. Gone are the dreams of Josh Hamilton patrolling CF, but OK. As long as Pagan produces at the same rate, the deal is good for both sides. If he goes all Aubrey Huff on us -- ring the register and forget to produce at the same level -- and any or all of these deals can backfire.

The ball is squarely in Scutaro's court now. He may get more interest from the AL big spenders but given his age, a three year deal may be more reasonable. It may be easier to replace Scutaro internally -- if Panik or Nick Noonan are ready for prime-time-- another IF utility guy would be needed in regardless of where Scutaro ends up if neither of the two prospects prove ready.

Busy, busy, busy.

from Yahoo Sports:
Giants, Pagan agree to 4-year deal - Yahoo! Sports:

"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Giants general manager Brian Sabean can check two big boxes off his winter to-do list. San Francisco and free-agent center fielder Angel Pagan agreed to a $40 million, four-year contract Monday as the winter meetings got under way in Nashville, Tenn."

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Fan Graphs weighs in with an Aubrey Huff comparable.
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/index.php/angel-pagan-not-aubrey-huff/

It's on the mind of every Giants fan out there. Guaranteed!!

Sunday, December 02, 2012

Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Coaches Should Reward The Effort More Than The Skill





This articles (below) have an awful lot of Carol Dweck and Mindset: The New Psychology for Success and Angela Duckworth's True Grit in them. Perseverance and effort as the keys to success in sports as well as many other life endeavors.

Football coaches verbalize it better with "It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up". Of course, in football they spend a lot of time knocking each other down, so that makes sense from a coaching / motivational perspective. 

But think about baseball. 

Not a lot of time spent getting physically knocked down in baseball. Unless you're the high school version of Barry Bonds watching your moon shots leave the yard. Then maybe getting some extra dirt in your diet.  

But think about the mental aspect of the game or your life outside the game. How many times do we mentally or emotionally get knocked down and stay down rather than bounce right back up? Or check out and stop playing hard, so to speak, for innings or games or days or weeks on end? Oh yeah right, I'm the only one this happens to!! OK folks!!

There is so much valuable wisdom for athletes, students, teachers, parents and coaches tied up in some of the quotes below that they do bear repeating.  Definitely something to work on. 

Those life lessons from the ball field, you gotta love 'em!! Now, if we could just stop giving everyone in T-Ball a trophy, we might just have a chance to turn things around a bit.  


from 80percentmental.com:
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental: Coaches Should Reward The Effort More Than The Skill:

Our youth sports culture is similar to the classroom.  Kids who are divided into “A” or “B” teams at an early age are taught that their development path is set; the skills they have now are the same skills they will have in the future.  It becomes a self-fulfilling cycle as the “A” teams get better coaching, play in the better leagues against better competition and the talent gap widens.
 Often, parents can also, unknowingly, contribute to this cycle.  As in school, when a child is told that his or her success is due to his brain not his effort, the perception begins that when they do eventually struggle with a math test or a tougher opponent, there is little they can do to improve.
Jin Li, a psychology professor at Brown University, has also been studying cultural differences in learning and teaching.  One of her research projects recorded conversations between parents and children to hear the language used.  
 There were subtle differences between American and Asian parents when complimenting their kids.  While the Americans praised with phrases like, “you’re so smart”, Asian parents focused on the struggle, “you’ve worked so hard on learning that and now you did it.”
 “So the focus is on the process of persisting through it despite the challenges, not giving up, and that’s what leads to success,” Li said in the same NPR interview.
 Every young athlete will face challenges as they move up the ladder from youth clubs to high school to college.  Instilling them with the belief that they can improve through hard work will keep them motivated to get to the other side of the wall.  Their support team of parents and coaches can help this process by rewarding the learning process.
“Think about that [kind of behavior] spread over a lifetime,” Stigler concluded. “That’s a big difference.”

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Why Boosting Perseverance Predicts Success More than a Harvard Degree

Posted: June 25th, 2010 by Michele Borba


http://www.micheleborba.com/blog/2010/06/25/why-perseverance-counts-more-than-a-harvard-degree-focus-on-what-really-matters-mom/

Did you know that more top CEOs in United States graduated from a state college than an Ivy League University such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton?
Shocked?
Research is showing there’s a far more important predictor of a grad’s future success than the prestige of the school or faculty or even the price of tuition. What matters far more is the  graduate’s “personal drive quotient.”
Nothing beats stick-to-it-ness and hard work when it comes to boosting success-absolutely nothing. And research continues to confirm that crucial fact.

 One of the most fascinating recent studies on student achievement was conducted by Harold Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. Stevenson sought to answer a question many Americans ask, “Why do Asian students do better academically than American students?”
Since 1979, Stevenson’s team of researchers conducted five intensive cross-national studies analyzing students’ achievement in the United States, China, Taiwan, and Japan. Hundreds of hours observing students and interviewing their teachers, the researchers reached a conclusion: a critical key lies in what parents emphasize about their children’s learning. Here’s the difference in parenting styles:
Asian parents strongly stress the value of effort with their children.  Over and again they tell their children, “Work as hard as you can, and you will be successful.” By expecting their children to work hard, and emphasizing the attitude: “there are no excuses for poor grades, you just didn’t work hard enough,” perseverance is nurtured in Asian children. And the parental expectations had a remarkable effect on their children. The researchers found on the whole, Asian children worker longer and harder than their American counterparts because they had recognized their success was based on how hard they worked.
Instead of prioritizing how much effort our kids put into their learning attempts, research found that most American parents emphasized: “So what grade did you get?” or “How many did you miss?” or “Did you win?”
The researchers also found that the effort a child put into their process is not nearly as important to the American parent as the end product of the grade or score.
Stevenson also found American parents place a greater emphasis on their children’s innate abilities. They tend to lower their academic expectations for their children if they perceive them to have lower academic abilities.
An Asian parents’ philosophy is different: any child can succeed regardless of an IQ score or handicap–success is all a matter of how hard you are willing to work.
Just think a minute of the long term effect of stressing effort could have on our children!
Our kids would learn from an early age that there’s nothing that can stop them from succeeding if they put their heart and soul into their endeavors. They would see mistakes or failures as just temporary setbacks, instead of as excuses to quit. If they just keep on trying, and use their mistakes as learning clues, they’ll ultimately achieve their goals!

Giants Top Minor League Prospects

  • 1. Joey Bart 6-2, 215 C Power arm and a power bat, playing a premium defensive position. Good catch and throw skills.
  • 2. Heliot Ramos 6-2, 185 OF Potential high-ceiling player the Giants have been looking for. Great bat speed, early returns were impressive.
  • 3. Chris Shaw 6-3. 230 1B Lefty power bat, limited defensively to 1B, Matt Adams comp?
  • 4. Tyler Beede 6-4, 215 RHP from Vanderbilt projects as top of the rotation starter when he works out his command/control issues. When he misses, he misses by a bunch.
  • 5. Stephen Duggar 6-1, 170 CF Another toolsy, under-achieving OF in the Gary Brown mold, hoping for better results.
  • 6. Sandro Fabian 6-0, 180 OF Dominican signee from 2014, shows some pop in his bat. Below average arm and lack of speed should push him towards LF.
  • 7. Aramis Garcia 6-2, 220 C from Florida INTL projects as a good bat behind the dish with enough defensive skill to play there long-term
  • 8. Heath Quinn 6-2, 190 OF Strong hitter, makes contact with improving approach at the plate. Returns from hamate bone injury.
  • 9. Garrett Williams 6-1, 205 LHP Former Oklahoma standout, Giants prototype, low-ceiling, high-floor prospect.
  • 10. Shaun Anderson 6-4, 225 RHP Large frame, 3.36 K/BB rate. Can start or relieve
  • 11. Jacob Gonzalez 6-3, 190 3B Good pedigree, impressive bat for HS prospect.
  • 12. Seth Corry 6-2 195 LHP Highly regard HS pick. Was mentioned as possible chip in high profile trades.
  • 13. C.J. Hinojosa 5-10, 175 SS Scrappy IF prospect in the mold of Kelby Tomlinson, just gets it done.
  • 14. Garett Cave 6-4, 200 RHP He misses a lot of bats and at times, the plate. 13 K/9 an 5 B/9. Wild thing.

2019 MLB Draft - Top HS Draft Prospects

  • 1. Bobby Witt, Jr. 6-1,185 SS Colleyville Heritage HS (TX) Oklahoma commit. Outstanding defensive SS who can hit. 6.4 speed in 60 yd. Touched 97 on mound. Son of former major leaguer. Five tool potential.
  • 2. Riley Greene 6-2, 190 OF Haggerty HS (FL) Florida commit.Best HS hitting prospect. LH bat with good eye, plate discipline and developing power.
  • 3. C.J. Abrams 6-2, 180 SS Blessed Trinity HS (GA) High-ceiling athlete. 70 speed with plus arm. Hitting needs to develop as he matures. Alabama commit.
  • 4. Reece Hinds 6-4, 210 SS Niceville HS (FL) Power bat, committed to LSU. Plus arm, solid enough bat to move to 3B down the road. 98MPH arm.
  • 5. Daniel Espino 6-3, 200 RHP Georgia Premier Academy (GA) LSU commit. Touches 98 on FB with wipe out SL.

2019 MLB Draft - Top College Draft Prospects

  • 1. Adley Rutschman C Oregon State Plus defender with great arm. Excellent receiver plus a switch hitter with some pop in the bat.
  • 2. Shea Langliers C Baylor Excelent throw and catch skills with good pop time. Quick bat, uses all fields approach with some pop.
  • 3. Zack Thompson 6-2 LHP Kentucky Missed time with an elbow issue. FB up to 95 with plenty of secondary stuff.
  • 4. Matt Wallner 6-5 OF Southern Miss Run producing bat plus mid to upper 90's FB closer. Power bat from the left side, athletic for size.
  • 5. Nick Lodolo LHP TCU Tall LHP, 95MPH FB and solid breaking stuff.