Archive for the 'Baseball' Category

Too Young to Go Scouting

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 23, 2010 in Baseball and Observations. 0 Comments

Atlanta Braves outfielder Jason Heyward is hitting darn near .300/.400/.600 through his first 40 games in the Major Leagues, and he won’t be able to buy himself an adult beverage until August 9. From what I’ve seen, he is an aggressive line-drive hitter with a phenomenal ability to hit the ball on the screws.

Here is an interesting story about how the Braves got him with their first pick of the 2007 Draft – after 13 other teams had passed on him.

I was sitting in the War Room of one of those 13 teams, and I wouldn’t use the words “passed up” to describe what happened. Of course, Heyward’s name came up in the weeks and months before the Draft, but our regional scouts’ and cross-checker’s comments were very similar to what Carroll Rogers reports in the story:

…Heyward walked 43 times in less than 100 plate appearances his senior year [of high school].

“I never saw him swing the bat until the third or fourth game I went to,” [Braves Scouting Director Roy] Clark said of Heyward’s senior season. “They just didn’t pitch to him. Even though area scouts might like him a lot, the cross-checkers and the scouting directors come in and they would get frustrated.”

Sure enough, we went through our video and had frame after frame of Heyward taking pitches. Our cross-checker relayed what the area scout had told him about Heyward’s ability, and of course the cross-checker was able to talk about Heyward’s body and athleticism. In the end, however, we had better information on other players and Heyward’s name fell off the list of possible players to take with our first pick.

Truth be told, several position players had similar stories that spring, and I’m sure that it happens every spring. High school coaches who want to win aren’t going to have their high school pitchers throw to the men playing among boys, and the fact that Barry Bonds was walking hundreds of times a season in the Major Leagues only a few years ago only strengthens the rhetoric behind the walk as a defensive weapon.

Rogers hints that there may have been something more sinister going on to keep clubs from getting a good look at Heyward and gently points a finger in the direction of Atlanta’s front office.

There are stories of phantom bad medical reports on pitcher Adam Wainwright and a fax circulated saying [Jeff] Francoeur wanted a $4 million signing bonus. In Heyward’s case, Clark was supposedly in cahoots with [Heyward's] high school coach to throw bad batting practice so other scouts couldn’t get a good look.

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“Roy will tell the story where, he laughs about it now, he’d be at the games in the spring and he’d go up to scouting directors and go, ‘Man, too bad he doesn’t take the bat off his shoulder more,”‘ [Baseball America editor Jim] Callis said. “They really worked it.”

How delicious! A bit of the old-fashioned smoke-and-mirrors that still has a place in modern scouting. All told, the story of how the Braves got Heyward with the 14th pick is a story of diligence and savvy the likes of which any good scout ought to have.

The Marlins, for their part, weren’t fooled – at least, area scout Brian Bridges wasn’t. He had his eye on Heyward and compared his swing to that of Willie McCovey – very high praise for a ballplayer at any level. What’s more, the Marlins had the 12th pick in the Draft and stood in perfect position to snatch the high-hanging fruit away from the Braves.

But just before the draft, Bridges learned the Marlins were going another route, blaming Heyward’s “signability.” The Marlins took high school third baseman Matt Dominguez out of California instead. They ultimately paid him $1.8 million, more than Heyward’s $1.7 million bonus with the Braves.

While Clark and Goetz were high-fiving in an elated Braves draft room after the Marlins passed on Heyward, Bridges was shaken.

“It was the sickest I’ve ever been as a scout,” he said.

Looks like there may have been some faux faxes going around about Heyward’s contract demands.

Sneakiness and cunning are all well and good in baseball, but there is a distasteful underside to this story that shows up in the middle of the article:

…Heyward was different; the Braves started tracking him at age 11.

[Al] Goetz, then a part-time scout for the Braves, was coaching his son’s team at the East Cobb Baseball complex in Marietta when he first got a glimpse of Heyward.

“I thought he was a coach,” Goetz said of Heyward, already pushing 6 feet. “I called (Braves scout) Rob English, and I said, ‘I know it’s crazy, but there’s an 11-year-old that we need to keep an eye on.”‘

I sincerely hope that this remark was made in as much privacy as was possible and that Heyward had no notion of Goetz’ thoughts at the time. Scouting kids younger than 16 makes my stomach turn. Baseball is supposed to be fun all the way up through high school, and having professionals stand around salivating at players who can’t even drive yet does not sit well with me.

With the international signing age set at 16, there is no way around scouting players younger than that. If your club wants to sign a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic or Taiwan, it needs a history on the boy.

This disturbs me on such a deep level because, on a slightly shallower level, I am not in favor of giving kids millions of dollars before any work is done. That doesn’t teach them anything about the way the rest of the world works, and, unless the money is dealt with smartly, doesn’t leave players in a good position in the very likely case that they fail to live up to expectations.

To do this to boys at an even younger age is inexcusable to me. The big, bad machine of MLB isn’t going to change this system or stop doing this, but that doesn’t mean that I have to participate directly. I was asked last year to go look at a pair of Japanese junior high boys, and I refused on those grounds.

It was the sickest I’d ever been as a scout.

The kid in the middle has above average hands, and the one on the left has plus determination. The kid on the right looks a bit stiff and doesn't project well as an outfielder.

The kid in the middle has above average hands, and the one on the left has plus determination. The kid on the right looks a bit stiff and doesn't project well as an outfielder.

More Mistakes

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 5, 2010 in Baseball and Observations. 1 Comment

Johan Santana gave up ten runs in less than 4 innings of work on Sunday Night Baseball. Jamie Moyer picked up the win despite giving up 5 runs.

The real news here is that I was able to watch this broadcast online without seeing the score (or the score by innings!) beforehand, and I could have watched it live if I wanted to. I couldn’t have done either of those things in 2005. Or 2007. My friends here laugh at my belated amazement, because apparently MLB.com figured these things out last year. What can I say, I had my head stuck in the Nippon Pro Baseball League.

The website offers premium users such as yours truly the option of watching the home or away broadcast for each game. Unless the game is broadcast by ESPN. Then you have to watch the ESPN broadcast.

Fine, said I, I wanted to catch up on MLB action and see Jamie Moy-yer* pitch to Luis Castiyy-yo and oppose Johan Santana. The game got off to an exciting start with David Wright hitting a three-run bomb off of Moy-yer after fouling off a 3-2 changeup out of the strike zone.

*Serious question: How did Jon Miller rise to the top with the obnoxious way he pronounces names? I mean, it was funny when he was the only guy who insisted on a pseudo-correct rendering of “Perez,” but he seems to rest a little too long on the LL in “Castillo” and it bothers me. I probably wouldn’t win that debate with a native speaker of Spanish, but when did Jamie Moyer change his last name to “Moller” and start pronouncing it in Spanish?

Santana came out and gave up a couple home runs of his own. The first was on an 0-2 pitch, and I have to hand it to Joe Morgan and Orel Hershiser, neither of them uttered the words “cardinal sin” or “mistake” in their analysis of the event. Santana made a good 0-2 pitch and Placido Polanco jumped on it with a short stroke and hit it out of the yard. Stuff like that happens, it’s baseball.

Hershiser: . . . [Santana] goes high and in 0-2, now, this is not a mistake other than maybe the ‘width,’ maybe get it in a little bit more, just doesn’t get it in enough. Polanco did a nice job [hitting the ball] . . .

Morgan: Actually, that choice of pitch surprises me . . . Polanco’s a good high ball hitter . . .

Would you look at that? Finally, some levelheaded analysis that gives both batter and pitcher credit for being fantastic baseball players. Good pitch, good batting, good baseball, good analysis. I felt all warm inside after hearing that exchange between Hershiser and Morgan, and then watching the game continue to unfold without them belaboring the point.

Two batters later, Santana made a great pitch to Ryan Howard, a low changeup on the outside corner, and Howard belted it into the seats. It was such a good pitch that even Joe Morgan could not poo-poo it:

Morgan: [Howard] hit a changeup out of the park, and it was not a bad changeup! It was away, coulda been a little lower, I guess . . .

That “I guess” made me smile. Joe said that right after the viewers got a slo-mo view of the K-Zone right after Santana had finished with his paintbrush, and then we got a side view of the pitch coming in at the top of Howard’s kneecaps. Can’t ask for much more than that, and I would argue that that was a fine pitch even if Santana was trying to go out of the strike zone with it. Howard is as strong as an ox, but he’ll swing and miss or hit something weakly on that same pitch 30 more times before he hits it well again.

So, we saw a pitcher make his pitch and get done in by home runs twice in the same inning, and I think that the announcing reflected that rather well. I was ready to give Hershiser and Morgan the night off for their excellent commentary (but not Miller, because Moy-yer was still on the mound) until Santana gave up two more home runs, including a grand slam, in the fourth inning.

Hershiser let the m-word slip when he and Morgan were reviewing the worst start of Santana’s career eleven short outs after it began. Morgan was tentative about admonishing Santana for those first two home runs and his comments contained the flavor of the telling “I guess” from the first inning.

When are we going to get past “mistakes”? Using that word for a pitch hardly constitutes analysis; it has become a knee-jerk reaction to the result of the play and the result only. I am embarrassed when I hear the word “mistake” bandied about by scouts; we are supposed to consider the results in proportion to the process and the tools. Humans play this game, and humans make mistakes to the extent that a certain number of them need to be allowed and need not be discussed.

Back to announcing – do we hear about mistakes when Jamie Moy-yer floats a curve ball right down the pipe for strike one? Or when Chase Utley hits a frozen rope right to where Luis Castiyy-yo is standing, and it just goes down as a ‘nuther 1/3 in the book? Only if the batter hits that get-me-over curve for extra bases, and only if Castiyy-yo isn’t standing right in that spot to save the day.

What I don’t want lost here is that hitters also have to do their job when these “mistakes” come up there on a silver platter. It is never a given that a certain hitter will get an extra-base hit on a certain “mistake” pitch because it is so difficult to hit a baseball well when it is being thrown at you in varying locations in a range of 69-99 miles per hour. A hitter could know what “mistake” is coming and the odds would still be in the pitcher’s favor. The pitcher has seven guys and an acre of land behind him.

I am calling for announcers to have the stones to give players credit for what they do well. Part of what makes baseball so intriguing is the fact that you can do a great job and get beat, and that sometimes you can win by getting away with poor execution. It’s so much like life in that respect.

And people in real life who laud the positive results of poor execution, or who chastise others who couldn’t get the best results out of superior execution for reasons out of their control, are fools.

Same Time is Safe

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 29, 2009 in Baseball. 0 Comments

When I flipped open the college course catalog in August 2001, I was looking for Vietnamese. I wanted to be able to communicate better and understand more of what was going on around me in my hometown, and, perhaps more importantly, I needed units to fill out my first quarter of college.

To my dismay, no such class existed at my school. I flipped over to East Asian Languages and Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stared out at me from the page. “Japanese play baseball, so they can’t be all that bad,” I thought to myself. I figured it would be cool to know what to say in case I ever met Hideo Nomo or Ichiro Suzuki, then in his first season in Major League Baseball, and I signed up for Japanese 1 intending to learn how to say “home run” and “double play.”

At the time, I wasn’t thinking about talking baseball with Japanese baseball lovers, but that has proven to be one of the most rewarding things about living in Japan and speaking the language. It took a long time to piece together a baseball vocabulary and to transfer all of my stories, opinions, and questions about the game into Japanese, but for awhile now I’ve been able to take a guy out, order some beers, and dip into any facet about the game with no trouble at all.

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When it comes to where they work, teachers in Japan are at the mercy of the boards of education in their prefectures (states, though they are roughly the size of counties in California). They must pass tests to earn qualification to teach in a certain prefecture, and then they work wherever in that prefecture they are placed. In two or three years, they get transferred to a different school in the prefecture, and it is rare for teachers or administrators to spend more than six or seven years in any one school; over a thirty-year career, they will teach at several different schools.

In last April’s annual merry-go-round of teacher swapping, my tech school got a new world history teacher named Mr. Baseball, called such because he ran a successful baseball program at his school way out at the western end of Kochi. Unfortunately, I recognized him right away as the tower ref I screamed at in the teachers’ volleyball tournament in 2007 that led to my retirement.

He remembered me but graciously laughed off the volleyball incident when we shook hands and reintroduced ourselves. It took all of thirty seconds for him to discover that I loved baseball, and I knew that we would have a fun relationship when we spent the next twenty minutes talking baseball until one of the vice principals had to remind us to go teach our first period classes.

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“Gee, I’d really love to see some Major League Baseball.”

Mr. Baseball echoes this wistful refrain almost every time we speak to each other. He has been all over Japan for baseball tournaments but has not once left his home country for baseball. I don’t know if he ever will, as I have found many Japanese people to be content to sigh and trail off as they describe their seemingly impossible dreams.

I did my best to bring an MLB perspective to him without ever telling him that I worked for an MLB team while I was teaching, but he opened up corners of my mind with his baseball stories and musings that were “limited” to his baseball experience in Japan.

The manager of the school baseball team had stayed on, so Mr. Baseball was relegated to Assistant Coach even though he was clearly a better candidate for the manager’s job. Mr. Baseball did what he could to change the baseball program, which included issuing written tests on the baseball rule book after learning that none of the players could acceptably define a baseball strike zone.

He gave me the test, and I failed to score the 70% required to pass because of a few sloppy language mistakes and, yes, lack of knowledge of the rules. Hey, it’s like CPR, you have to review it once in awhile or you’ll forget it. Interference plays, for example, are tough to remember; I know that someone’s out, but I couldn’t tell you offhand whether it’s the batter or the runner in some cases.

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We brought the rule book out on several occasions to answer questions and aid discussions we’d have during our free periods in the teachers’ office.

Mr. Baseball asked me once why a runner tagging up can’t get behind the bag and take a running start before the ball is caught. The concept makes sense; the runner gets some momentum going, times it so that he steps on the bag when the fielder catches the ball, and then continues home or to the next base at full speed.

But the note in Rule 7.10 (a) prohibits a runner from taking a “flying start from a position in back of his base,” and that’s one that I’ve never seen attempted before but somehow remembered word-for-word. I told Mr. Baseball, and he was surprised, but I applauded the thought that he put into it. After all, the Flying Start Rule, all substitution rules, the Infield Fly Rule, and many others exist because some smart players exploited the lack of said rules early in the game’s history.

Mr. Baseball then wondered why, with runners on first and third and two outs, the runner on first doesn’t run through second base on a ground ball. Whether sliding headfirst or running through a base gets a runner there faster is open for debate, but runners slide into second and third base primarily because they have to hang onto the bag to continue to be safe.

That need is erased with two outs and a run on the line. I agree with Mr. Baseball; why not run through second base when the infielders decide to “go the easy way” with two outs and another runner on third? It may get the runner there faster than the ball and will certainly confuse the defense.

Sure, the shortstop or second baseman will tag the runner for the third out, but by that time, hopefully, the batter-runner is across first base and the runner on third has waltzed home with a cheap run. The principle is the same as a runner getting into a rundown between first and second or a batter-runner drawing a throw to second base in order to allow a run to score.

I’ll certainly keep that gem in the back of my mind and hope that I see it attempted some day.

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“Tie goes to the runner!”

This is one of my favorite American baseball phrases. From the playground to the stands at Little League and high school games, this one solves disputes in a way that makes everyone happy. Right? Don’t you just love it?

It doesn’t show up at all in the rule book, and, unfortunately, the stipulations in the book leave it open for debate (if, in fact, there was such a thing as a tie). Check it out:

Rule 6.05 (j) . . . a batter is out when after a third strike or after he hits a fair ball, he or first base is tagged before he touches first base.

So, supposing a tie is physically possible, it sounds like he would be safe because the bag must be tagged before he touches it. Safe until proven out.

But wait!

Rule 7.01 . . . a runner acquires the right to an unoccupied base when he touches it before he is out.

For the timing there, we need a definition of “out,” which Rule 7.08 (e) gives us (emphasis mine):

Any runner is out when he fails to reach the next base before a fielder tags him or the base, after he has been forced to advance by reason of the batter becoming a runner.

The rule goes on to say that the same thing applies when there is no previous runner forcing the runner in question ahead, just that the runner in question must be tagged. So, the runner is responsible for making himself safe; he is out until proven safe.

It seems to me that the ball must beat the batter to first base, but that a runner must beat the ball to any subsequent bases. I can live with that. I simply despise ties and accepted playground wisdom, and therein lies my problem with “tie goes to the runner.”

The expression in Japanese literally translates to “same time is safe.” It grated on my ears the first time I heard it and has every time since. I thought about jumping on the next plane to Los Angeles when I learned that the following was written in the Japanese rule book until 1967:

The umpire may not call a batter-runner out if the fielder touches the batter or the base at the same time or after the batter-runner has touched first base.

Sickening. A rule book providing for “maybe” in a yes/no decision. Then again, I once umpired with a guy who told me that he abided by the “when in doubt, out” principle. Incidentally, I don’t think that guy wore a cup, so I knew he wasn’t to be trusted.

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Mr. Baseball turned me on to this story:

On July 19, 1959, with one out and a runner at first base in a Pacific League game between the Daimai Orions and the Nishitetsu Lions, the hitter dropped down a bunt and the pitcher scooped it up and threw to second to attempt to retire the lead runner. Umpire Nobuaki Nidegawa called the runner safe, prompting Lions manager Osamu Mihara to race out of the dugout and argue the call. Nidegawa explained that the runner and the ball had reached the base at the same time, so the runner was safe.

Mihara was livid and followed Nidegawa into the umpires’ dressing room after the game, demanding that he check the rule book and knowing that Nidegawa would not find the phrase “tie goes to the runner” in its pages.

Nidegawa replied, “I am the rulebook.” Thus, “same time is safe” infiltrated the language of baseball in Japan.

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I am very happy that I know men like Mr. Baseball and have places to go to just sit and talk baseball. I got plenty of that while I was scouting, but there there were taboo subjects, politics, and reputations on the line, so it most definitely felt like work. However, when Mr. Baseball and I get into conversations in the language of baseball I am able to forget when and where we are and simply discuss.

Mistakes Kill Me

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 24, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 0 Comments

Check it out! My first Mailbag entry!

Pete writes:

Question for you regarding pitchers and their ability or non-ability to hit their “spots”. When a pitcher, such as last night when Hughes was pitching to Guerrero and had him looking like a 2nd grader swinging a wet noodle, throws at a 45 foot curveball for a swinging strike do you throw him another CB to get rid of him or waste a pitch up and in to his zone? We know what happened, Hughes missed down the d@ck and Vlad as his does hits a weak GB up the middle for a hit to extend the inning. Was that pitch a mistake because he missed his “spot”???? What is the percentage of mistake pitches that are made during a MLB game. Someone here has the opinion that it is somewhere in the 85% range of mistake pitches during an MLB game. I am very curious to read your take on this.
Thank you!
Pete

And, from Pops:

Bob,

Dan Koosed is my Assistant GM here at the Flyers. We debate baseball a fair amount and have been discussing the bad umpiring on the last few games as have you.

I made mention about the infamous “mistake” pitch and it boiled down to me claiming that a pitcher only really hits his “spot” perhaps as low as 15% of the time. I mean really throws the ball exactly where he intends it to go!

Not talking balls and strikes here, I am talking I threw the dang thing on the mark I set in my brain.

So the question is to the wise Bob Sanchez, what percentage of the time do you think this occurs? That th pitcher could actually say I meant to hit that spot?

Can’t wait for your answer. No money on it. . . yet.

XXOO

Readers comin’ out of the woodwork! I love it! If I didn’t know better, I’d think Pete and Pops are trying to settle a bet through Bob Sanchez’ BS. Bring it on!

Pops, tough question that doesn’t have a scientific answer as far as I know! Some smart folks have studied it and written about it on the Internet, and there still isn’t a way to get into another human being’s head and know for sure what he wanted to do.

Yet that is what analysts and scouts are asked to do. You can rely on the catcher’s target and what you know about the pitcher and the pitch sequences, but I don’t think anybody is any more or less clued in than the hitter, and if we’ve done this right, most of us remember what it’s like to be a hitter!

I’m cycling through the memories of the hundreds of pitching performances I’ve seen over the last four years and settling on numbers that seem right, so please pardon the lack of scientific evidence here.

A lot depends on how you define a “spot,” and of course the pitcher’s objective (within the objective of getting the guy in the batter’s box out) changes with every succeeding pitch. On a 3-0 count, for example, you want to throw a strike that doesn’t get hit 10,000 miles assuming the batter would swing and you’re not trying to walk him. Your “spot” would be pretty big, then, in that case.

I think a Major League starting pitcher with poor command on any given day will still hit his spot with 30 out of 100 pitches. Of course, he probably won’t get to 100, but I think 30% is the least you can expect from a professional starter at the highest level on the planet.

A starter who is dealin’ will be somewhere between 50% and 70% for me. Here, the fact that he is having a great day works in his favor. You can bet the hitters are talking about the location of his stuff, and they may not be expecting anything good to hit. Let’s say a pitcher misses his spots and walks a guy or gives up a double, well that’s no matter, he’s on fire with his command and will get the next guy. That’s my best explanation as to how a guy can be dominant and still “miss” 40% of the time.

Pitches over the middle of the plate are easier to hit hard than pitches elsewhere, for the most part. However, hitting is so difficult that even if the pitcher “leaves one over the middle,” it’s not the end of the world. Watch the HR round of BP and see how guys ooh and aah when the batter hits three in a row out of the yard. Or 28 HR in one round of the Derby? Just amazing.

The best hitters hit the tobacco juice out of pitches over the middle when they get them, but if every “miss” left the park or eluded the eight gloves out there, we’d have guys hitting .450 with 130 HR. Yes, hitters get good pitches to hit that often.

Pete, let’s get to your question for one example of a “mistake.” As you mentioned, Hughes’ target on that pitch was up an in out of the strike zone, a tough pitch for Vlad to do anything with except hit on the ground between the shortstop and third baseman as we’ve seen him do countless times. That may have been why Jeter seemed to be a step or two closer to third base.

Hughes ended up throwing the ball right down the c@ck, as you put it, and Vlad hit a weak grounder up the middle that got “pasta-diving Jeter!” My head sunk when he hit that ball, as yours probably did, because it didn’t seem to have enough juice to get through the infield in that first instant. The replay showing the reaction on the bench was exactly the same. The guys stayed down and exploded when it got through; they didn’t get up on their toes on the crack of the bat and then jump up in a separate motion as could be expected if Vlad had hit a rod.

Telling, isn’t it? Here’s a “mistake,” and it’s not hit well. Hughes missed his target, that is undeniable. But so did Vlad! Unbelievable! Unacceptable? Imperfect execution on both ends, but not what I would call mistakes. Asking Hughes to thread the needle or Vlad to hit everything in a certain zone on the screws every time is asking too much.

I’ve asked around and heard the “mistake pitch” attributed to Tom Glavine, who called one of his own pitches a mistake after a game in the 1990s. It spread like wildfire and morphed into what we know today, the casual comment made by commentators about pitches that went wrong based on the results.

People feel smart when they can point out where someone else messed up, and I think that announcers and fans alike don’t consider what they are doing when they criticize these elite athletes. They can say, “The Twins can’t make these mistakes and expect to beat the Yankees,” or “You know you can’t make pitches like that to Vlad,” around the water cooler and feel like baseball geniuses. Disrespectful, negative, and derogatory, each and every one.

What “mistake” hounds miss, I think, is that the pitcher-batter matchup is not a Scantron test with one side automatically executing something based on the human input on the other. It’s two human beings facing each other in a battle of wits and skill, and the success rate is perfect enough from either side that it makes the battle fun to watch. Again, and again, and again.

Thank you, gentlemen, for reading and asking.

From Rocking Chairs to Extinction

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 21, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 2 Comments

There is a problem with the way we watch baseball games, or perhaps more accurately, with the way baseball games are provided for our eyes and ears to enjoy. The picture has never been clearer, the camera angles never better, the sound never sharper, and the graphics never more informative, but the taste of it gets more and more sour with each passing postseason.

Countless replays and K-Zones have made it incredibly easy for fans to be armchair umpires, which is interesting because some accounts have the umpires themselves in rocking chairs twenty feet behind home plate in the 19th century. We are able to see every pitch and every tag from a myriad of angles at varying stages of slow motion whether we want to or not, and I imagine that many of us take a perverse pleasure in doing someone’s job better than he can do it from the safety of our homes and offices.

The two or three talking heads assigned to overanalyze each postseason baseball game jump into the fray as well, declaring calls good or bad based on these replays. Notice that they reserve judgment until the replays show what is without a doubt the right call, that their tongues cluck only after the ball has settled on one side of the white line or the other, or that they offer congratulations for a consistent strike zone only after the points are plotted and the yellow streak is painted on the rectangle.

To be fair, there have been some badly missed calls this offseason, some that leave me shaking my head and feeling awful for the men in blue. I try to make my call when they make their call, to form my opinion in the moment just like they must, but I cannot close my eyes when the replays come. The admonishment from the press box makes my stomach turn, but in these cases, the fact remains that the umpires were wrong.

This is not a good thing. Umpire errors are not as much a part of the game as the curve ball and the seventh inning stretch. We should not tolerate such incompetence, especially since we now have the technology to correct these mistakes.

There are two systems at work here. One is archaic and relies on human resources. It is expensive and frustrating and rarely goes a day without making someone upset at a malfunction, real or perceived. The worst feature of this system is that it will correct an error by itself only very rarely; everyone in the game must live with whatever the system produces and continue on with life.

The second, newer system has not been officially implemented yet, but we can see it at work on our TVs and our favorite stats websites. It will almost always tell us the right call with complete impartiality, offer us an infinite number of looks at every single play, and, perhaps best of all, never argue and never ask for a vacation.

The two systems do not work in harmony, rather creating a cacophony, a polytonal opus comprised of smug second-guessing, embarrassing replays, and superfluous graphics that have to strain to show us their meaning. It is difficult to watch baseball with these two systems warring against each other and MLB standing by doing nothing about all of the noise.

Something needs to happen before the first pitch of the 2010 season. I see two alternatives.

1) MLB, the umpire’s union, and the networks agree not to show instant replays. Ever. Umpires’ responsibilities remain intact.

2) MLB strips umpire responsibilities down to tag plays and rule interpretations and leaves fair/foul, ball/strike, force plays and home run/not home run to the hardware. The game is ruled by computers that give instant, indisputable decisions.

The first option would make watching baseball so much more beautiful but is also so unlikely to happen. Of course people want to know what the right call was. Of course people want to see that bang-bang play again and again, if anything to distance themselves as far as possible from having to actually watch the game and make a decision for themselves.

I could live with umpire errors if we weren’t constantly reminded of their frequency and degree. I could accept the human element if game analysis and reporting were approached with more humanity. This last gripe extends to coverage of the players and managers as well; second-guessing has gotten so harsh and so negative lately that it’s a wonder that any of these “journalists” are still allowed within thirty-nine feet of the clubhouse.

The first option might spur a decline in the number of useless graphics and in-your-face pseudo-analysis. Who cares how far Bobby Abreu is standing off first base when he takes his lead, don’t the producers understand that the naked eye can tell us enough? Why do I need to know that a Yankees key to victory is for A-Rod to “continue past struggles” or that “Figgins’ bat needs to wake-up” for the Angels to have a chance? (No kidding on those last ones, I wonder if we can show replays and ostracize the producer that those gems sneaked past)

When is the last time you watched a baseball game at any level without an electronic scoreboard? It’s amazing how rich a baseball experience can be when you actually have to pay attention to the score, the count, and how many outs there are. Maybe ditching umpire-bashing replays could help steer the mad, mad baseball media machine back in that direction.

The second option takes care of the incorrect calls, speeds up the games, and almost completely eliminates arguments and ejections. It would take some capital to develop the perfect strike zone machine and install it in all 30 ballparks, but fair/foul is basically already being done with line judging in tennis, and I’m sure that geniuses can come up with some system for force plays where they rig the bases and the infielders’ shoes with sensors that could pick up stimuli and make the correct decision.

The Yes or No calls in baseball are easy enough for a machine to make on the spot, nearly as fast as a human being (way faster in the case of certain guys behind the plate). My primitive mind can’t imagine a computer system advanced enough to get tag plays right with any kind of speed, and it even takes human umpires some time to see the whole play and make those calls. We could keep four umpires around for tag plays, balks, and for interpreting rules.

I’m ready to do away with umpires calling balls and strikes, fair and foul, home run and not-home run, and force plays. We have the technology to do it and it is dangled in front of us on the television, there for any yahoo with a blog or a sports column or a microphone in front of his mouth to use it to pontificate about umpires “bearing down out there” and taking accountability for their performance.

Those in favor of keeping umpires around are trying to honor the history of baseball, but mocking umpires with instant replay and loudmouthed analysis is degrading and is getting old fast. Keeping both systems in place as they are is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the umpires and to the game of baseball and requires urgent attention.

After posting this and sleeping on it, I realize that I strayed a bit with my comments about negative commentary regarding the umpires’ calls. I don’t think that the live announcers have been all that brutal about the missed calls, and I haven’t seen anything in writing that really goes after the umpires.

I think that everyone probably understands that attacking the calls after the fact is egregious second-guessing and is quite cowardly. However, I’ll stand by my feelings that media coverage of the players and managers is far too negative and smug. Everything is a “mistake” or a “awful decision” and these people have no business using the words and tones that they do to describe these plays because they are so far away from the action.

Some idiot game recap reporter at ESPN assaulted Maicer Izturis’ attempt at a double play in the 13th inning of Game 2 of the ALCS by calling it a “TERR-R-R-ible throw,” which, though partly true, was annoying because of the way he said it. The screen showed the barf-inducing Yankees dogpile and then cut to the box score, where the announcer decided to harp on Izturis again, saying, “…and the Yankees take Game 2 on Izturis’ HORR-R-R-R-ible decision…” The man should be fired and ESPN ashamed at that excuse for coverage.

What happens now? Are we going to ditch replays or sack the umpires? I’m afraid that we’ll get some lukewarm, middle-of-the-road alternative and that MLB will do one more thing to compromise the quality of its product.

Dome of Silence

Published by Bob Sanchez on July 6, 2009 in Baseball and Funnies. 1 Comment

There are a few things about the fan’s baseball experience that I will never be able to understand, and the presence of on-field promotions is one of them.

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Only slightly related:

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I realize the importance of events and stunts in putting butts in seats, and I can’t deny their entertainment value nor can I say that I am not amused or interested when they occur. However, I go to a baseball game to watch the baseball game and could do without what sometimes becomes an unnecessary delay of the game.

Two weekends ago, I headed to Osaka to catch a pair of doubleheaders, two day games featuring the Orix Buffaloes and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles at Kyocera Dome and a couple of nightcaps at Hanshin Koshien Stadium with the Yokohama BayStars visiting the Hanshin Tigers.

Orix and Hanshin take about as opposite an approach to fan entertainment as can be seen in Japan. Hanshin is often compared to the Red Sox, constantly playing second fiddle to Nippon Pro Baseball’s Yankees, the Yomiuri Giants.

The comparison is not quite as valid now that Boston wins and has a following that has long since passed the threshhold of mildly annoying. However, the Tigers have one of Japan’s oldest ballparks and a rabid fan base that packs the stadium for every single home game, so they are similar to the Red Sox in those respects.

The park is always full and the fans fall in love with whoever dons the black pinstripes, memorizing their fight songs and shaking the foundations of the old yard with every new batter and fine defensive play. There isn’t much need for on-field gimmicks, and though they employ two ridiculous Tiger mascots, their antics are quite tame and limited compared to the mascots of other Japanese teams.

Simply put, Koshien Stadium is a lot like Dodger Stadium; you go and there’s not much else to do besides watch the baseball game in the way that the local fans do. Which is arriving late and leaving early in Los Angeles and elbowing your way into the non-reserved outfield seats and staying and singing until the ushers kick you out before the last train in Nishinomiya.

Orix, on the other hand, does not enjoy the long tradition and strong fan base that Hanshin does, and they only play the Yomiuri Giants four times each season, so half of the country is not interested in them by default. They have to work harder to attract fans to the park.

I think the Buffaloes are the best entertainment yen in the Pacific League and second in Japanese baseball to the Hiroshima Carp. Orix seems to be all about getting kids on the field and on the scoreboard and sending the fans home with armloads of Buffaloes junk to go along with the sore backsides they’ll have after sitting on those hard plastic Dome seats.

Last weekend, however, every promo they tried somehow went sour, sometimes to an embarrassing degree.

In the Pacific League (the less popular of the two), I’ve noticed that the visiting teams’ mascots and entertainment staff travel with their clubs and get a significant amount of attention and air time at the opposing team’s park. Personally, if I was all Go-Go-Buffaloes, I’d be annoyed at how much time they take up, and either way it just seems much too friendly to me.

The Eagles brought a giant bitter melon (called “goya” in Japanese) with them and turned him loose on the field after lineup cards were exchanged and before Orix took the field for the top of the first inning.

Like all Japanese “characters,” Goya had a back story and twinkled with awe at being in the big city after growing up in Okinawa. His mock excitement and jokes about the Osaka accent wore thin on me pretty quickly, and the throng of 10,000 or so was similarly disinterested in the gigantic squash hopping around behind the pitcher’s mound extolling the virtues of the Eagles.

He told the fans to put their hands together for him as he was about to sing the Buffaloes’ fight song, and nary a fan clapped or made a noise. His Fan-o-Meter had run empty. In a panic, the PA announcer flipped on his microphone and begged the fans to show some support for the goya, and they responded with a lame round of applause.

The familiar strains of Orix’s song blasted through the speakers, and Goya began singing the words a little late and out of rhythm. At first, it seemed like a joke, but as the song continued and Goya fell further behind and more off the beat, I realized that the guy in the suit simply could not carry a tune or keep the beat.

Oh, was it painful to listen to! I don’t know if it stood out to others as much as it did to me, but nobody was laughing or enjoying themselves. I’m sure that 10,000 strong joined me in a silent prayer that the techies would hit the crossfader before the second verse kicked in.

The PA Announcer finally asked Goya to stop in a bit that could have been scripted, but Goya took it way too far with his “Hey, I was great, wasn’t I? Not a single mistake, eh?” shtick. At that point, I was so desperate to see him leave that I was actually looking forward to seeing the ceremonial first pitch.

Every pro game has a ceremonial first pitch, but they go about it in such strange fashion. The starting pitcher gets on the mound, throws one or two warmup pitches, and then the event staff interrupts him with the ceremonial first pitch. On Saturday, the ceremonial first pitch crew was ready to go but stood out there next to the mound until the starter had thrown a couple of warmup pitches.

The leadoff batter for the visiting team jumps in the box and is supposed to swing and miss at whatever the guest on the mound throws.

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Of course, there are jokers out there who swing at the first pitch and make contact, and Tsuyoshi Shinjo has even said that he wants to park the first pitch some day.

The opposite happens on occasion, as when the batter in the 1964 All Star Game didn’t swing at the ceremonial first pitch because he was shooting the breeze with the catcher when it came floating in.

On Sunday, the man on the mound wound up and fired a fastball behind the Rakuten leadoff hitter’s back, and I understood it as retaliation for Saturday’s bevy of brushback pitches. The teams had thrown at each other all day, adding to the sluggish pace of the game.

Saturday’s final was 11-5 Rakuten, and there were well over 20 hits between the two teams. Pitchers couldn’t get their signs straight and couldn’t throw strikes, and we were only spared from reaching four hours by a few baserunning gaffes. The game was every bit as bad as the promotions that took place in its middle innings.

After the third inning, a weird-looking duck slash monster came roaring onto the field on a minibike from the left field gate, revving its tiny engine and waving to the fans. The PA announcer introduced him as “Karasuko,” and I didn’t catch the back story, but it was probably as silly as an enormous cucumber from Okinawa following a baseball team around Japan.

Karasuko stopped in dead center field and proceeded to do a couple of handsprings leading into a backflip, which he failed to pull off, landing on his belly. Dazed and possibly hurting, he made his way back to the bike but couldn’t start the thing. After trying in vain to kick-start the bike with his comically oversized foam shoes, he had no choice but to give up and push the bike off the field. An eternity passed before he gathered momentum on the thick carpet, and he waved a beleaguered goodbye as he reached the left field gate.

Given Saturday’s performance, I can understand the look on this guy’s face.

Unbelievably, Karasuko and Goya each made a second appearance on Sunday. This time Goya set up his pregame anthem by saying he would treat us to the Eagles’ fight song and acted surprised and angry when the Buffaloes’ song poured into the Dome. He missed the first line and I thought Orix’s event staff had gotten this one right, but no, he began to squawk again and it was every bit as excruciating as the day before.

They had to turn his microphone off to get him to exit the field on Sunday. Karasuko rode onto the field from left field again, but continued all the way to the right field gate and left his bike there. Then he ran back to center field and did a slightly better backflip before sprinting off the field to the quiet murmurs of an unenthusiastic crowd.

When an Orix player hits a home run, a staff member wielding a park mic goes through the crowd in search of someone who wants to try their hand at calling the home run like a TV announcer. They play back the image on the scoreboard and have the fan make the call in their own way. It’s a neat promo and they can usually get two fans in before the half-inning break is over.

On Sunday, they found a pretty college girl to do the first call and, much to our dismay, informed us that Goya would handle the second call. The person explaining the gimmick was not an Orix staff member well-versed in the intro but the Rakuten PA announcer. What in the world was HE doing in Osaka? If the Eagles are spending that kind of money on their promotions, I want to scout for them!

He took a little too long to explain the setup, and he had barely handed the microphone off to the college girl when the home run was on the screen and being hit in front of our eyes. The girl, perhaps shy, perhaps dense, looked at the screen, looked at the Rakuten announcer, and asked, “Is it time yet?” She stood there silent as Greg LaRocca’s colossal upper deck home run smacked into an empty seat without a voice to describe it.

The Rakuten guy grabbed the microphone from the girl and handed it to Goya, who proceeded to talk about how great the Eagles pitcher was all the way through the second playback of LaRocca’s home run. It was not funny at all, and we were left with one very unsatisfied and confused fan and 9,999 others who were not entertained.

As I said, Orix usually has some of the best promos in Japanese baseball, but they tanked on that weekend. It was extremely poor execution, and almost all at the hands of the visiting team’s personnel.

I had time to pay attention to all of this because I was watching two uninteresting starting pitchers for the third time and nobody threw strikes or put guys away after getting ahead in the count. It would have been nice if the rainwater storage facilities on the roof of the Dome exploded and washed the game out. At the very least, it would have been more exciting.

Their Space

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 13, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 0 Comments

Japanese baseball fans make me love them and hate them. Our relationship has changed a few times since I started watching Japanese baseball, and I’ve realized that the reasons I hate them aren’t always their fault.

When I saw my first couple of Japanese baseball games, I was blown away by the organization and strength of the crowds in the outfield. It much resembled American college football, with fans separated into sections according to team loyalty and musical instruments to lead the singing and chanting.

(This person does a much better job describing it than I do)

I then observed that the cheering had little to do with what was going on out on the field and that fans seemed to devote the same amount of energy to stars and role players alike. While that’s cool in some respects, it bothered me because I was trying to concentrate on the game, and these people would cheer their heads off regardless of the situation.

By 2005, I had lost almost all of the baseball fan left in me; I loved to watch the game and didn’t care who won or lost. At the same time, I didn’t see the point in believing that a .190 career hitter will drive in a guy from first base with two outs, yet the Japanese fans do and implore him to do so. They yell and cheer as much in that situation as they do when their best hitter is up with the bases loaded and nobody out.

If it wasn’t so damn loud I wouldn’t have minded so much, but I found myself rolling my eyes quite a bit in that first year. It was somewhat similar to sitting in front of the know-it-all who just has to pipe up with silly misperceptions about the game and about his importance as a fan.

I probably sound pretty crabby and frumpy, and I suppose that I am. It’s just so much easier to take in a game in the relative peace and quiet of an American ballpark. It’s baseball, not soccer or football.

Since I’ve begun scouting, I’ve been able to let go and just let the fans have their fun. I have a job to do and have learned to tune out the mindless noise, and almost all of it takes place in the outfield seats, anyway.

MLB parks have seats set aside for scouts from other teams, and if a Japanese scout shows up to look for future Nippon Pro “helpers,” they are accommodated with a seat, even at crowded bandboxes like Fenway Park and Wrigley Field.

In Japan, MLB scouts are generally tolerated at best but scorned at worst. The Nippon Ham Fighters and the Seibu Lions treat us very well and give us seats right behind home plate, and a few other clubs can’t give us seats because of the rabid fan base but do their best with passes to the park and early access.

The Chunichi Dragons and Yomiuri Giants treat us horribly. The Giants charge scouts for tickets when they feel like it and give us seats 70 rows back of the plate and off to one side. The Dragons sat my boss behind the left field foul pole once and their international guy makes me feel like I’m putting him out every time I ask for arrangements.

Compared to how well Americans treat Japanese, the situation in Japan is not good. It starts with “horse” and rhymes with “base hit.”

Literally in the middle of all of this are the fans. At parks where we have passes, we have to guess with our seats and often get bumped by fans that arrive late. Since we don’t have seat numbers, we have no choice but to pack up and move. Do this three or four times when you’re trying to zone in on a player and it gets very frustrating.

Of course, fans buy food and spill beer and cheer for their teams. The difference in Japan is that they’re doing it right next to scouts in smaller quarters; it is not a good working environment for us. Sometimes, I find myself getting short with the fans. They invade my working space and cause distractions that shouldn’t be there.

The Hanshin Tigers sometimes give us unassigned seats, which means that we have to get to the park early and plop our stuff down on a bench or a seat to reserve it. Depending on the location of the game or the opponent, we may have to arrive as early as four hours prior to the first pitch.

I did so at Hanshin’s first spring game at the end of February, arriving at the ballpark in Aki City (in Kochi!) at 9:30 a.m. for a 1:00 game. I elbowed my way into a single bench seat behind the plate and waited for the game to begin.

An older fellow on my left lit up a cigarette, and I bristled at the smoke and the audacity of doing that in a huge, tightly-packed group of people. Who went and made it 1960 when I wasn’t looking? Japan isn’t quite as up on anti-smoking as, say, California, but it’s certainly to the point that most people realize the inconvenience and rudeness of smoking in a public place with children and non-smokers present.

As I prepared a diatribe to unleash on the dude to my left, I looked around for a No Smoking sign to back me up and, to my disgust, found none. As I panned the crowd, I saw many smokers and counted quite a few close enough to me to make my anti-smoking hill a bad one to die on.

They were pouncing on the lack of signage and enjoying an age-old pleasure, and I realized at that moment that it was not they who were in my work space, it was I who was in their fun space. And not just at Aki City Ballpark, but everywhere in Japan.

The system has made it so, and the fans and I are just pawns in that system.

Should the Japanese teams make special seats for scouts? Absolutely. Americans extend the same courtesy to them. I would hate to take that courtesy away for the sake of the few teams that treat us very well and for the others who do the best they can.

However, I am more than a little fed up with my job being harder than it has to be for no good reason. I had to move five times a few weekends ago and laid into two guys who were having a good laugh at my expense. I usually let comments by fans slip by, but I allowed those two clowns to get under my skin and probably didn’t make them any smarter in the process.

Look, I’m not Jackie Robinson by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s difficult not to feel wrongly discriminated against when you see all of the Japanese scouts comfortably seated in the best seats for scouting with their cameras and radar guns propped up in empty seats, and when you know that your club is being hospitable to Japanese scouts in the United States while your makeshift workstation is constantly changing.

Either way, it’s not the fans’ fault and I need to do a better job remembering that. As I get to know the Japanese professionals more deeply, I won’t need to sit in the best seats and can probably spend time roaming around the park and getting more views from the side.

In the meantime, I’ll have to continue to sit amongst the masses that include chain smokers, drunks, leather-lungs, the manager’s mother, starry-eyed children, village idiots, gangsters, pop stars, groupies, and good old baseball fans.

The Best Slider I Ever Saw

Published by Bob Sanchez on May 7, 2009 in Baseball. 1 Comment

It’s fun to ask older baseball guys about the best fastball, the best swing, the best start out of the box, or the best catch they ever saw. They have much better perspective than us younger guys, who are almost constantly updating our “best ever”s by virtue of not having seen enough.

I’m getting to the point in my scouting career where I trust my eyes to make me say, “WOW!” when there’s something worth saying “WOW!” about. I’m not going to miss something obviously good, and my Rolodex of curve balls, frozen ropes, and outstanding plays is getting larger by the weekend.

A great friend of mine loves baseball because he sees something new every time he watches it. While I can’t claim to have as fresh an approach to studying the game as he does, I often see things that challenge my views and force me to reconsider how I think about baseball.

Seeing something completely new is highly stimulating and is one very good reason for why I keep going out to watch games. The thrill of pushing out into the unknown burns itself into my memory and I look back fondly on those influential firsts.

I was ten the first time I saw a curve ball in a game, and only one kid in the league was throwing them. I actually hit it, a feeling that I wouldn’t get used to until the last year I played competitively, but only when I returned to the bench and heard the manager’s disgusted remarks about nine-year-olds throwing curve balls did I even begin to think something was amiss.

Realistically, it was just a ball spinning sideways. We played with a real, MLB-sized baseball and few kids that age have fingers long and strong enough to throw a decent hammer. In my five years as an umpire in youth baseball, I saw kids as young as six years old trying to throw curves and it was laughable and deeply saddening at the same time.

I was a catcher until high school mainly because I wanted to play in every game and couldn’t hit. Volunteering to catch ensured that I wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle of kids made to stand out in right field for their mandatory three innings. It’s also a huge part of how I came to know and love the game of baseball.

Catcher is the defensive position with the most bits and pieces of knowledge to learn, and it’s very physical, so both the body and mind are firing. I had absolutely no baseball or athletic instincts, but I was able to learn the game much more quickly by squatting and watching thousands of pitches and swings up close than I would have by standing in right field, pounding my cup, and counting ladybugs.

The idea that there is more to the game than meets the eye at any given time was constantly reinforced during my education as a catcher. When I was eight years old, my father took me to a game at the next level, 9- and 10-year-olds, and told me to watch the catchers.

“See? You’ve got to watch out for bunts, stop the ball from getting behind you, and throw to second on a dime.” I was terrified – those ten-year-olds looked like men and moved like mustangs. The game was so fast, and my responsibilities would increase tenfold.

That first season of real baseball (kids pitch all year, balks, stolen bases, dropped third strikes, the whole bit) was a big one for me. I couldn’t hit a lick, so I bunted every single time I came up to the plate. It got to the point where Bob Sanchez would walk up to the plate and the other team’s catcher would say, “Watch the buuu-uuunt!” in that taunting, ten-year-old way. It was humiliating and drove me crazy, but it was better than striking out every time.

Luckily, I was able to get lost in catching, because in addition to being physically demanding and taking up the thickest chapter of the book on defense, there are a lot of places for a kid to look for positives. Throw a kid out stealing, back pick to first base, field a bunt and throw out the lead runner, catch all third strikes, block the ball with runners on – these were my goals. So what if I couldn’t hit?

My father worked with me before and after practice and in our back yard after he came home from work. We didn’t make much progress with hitting, but I always enjoyed the catching drills we did together. He showed me how to block, how to throw like a catcher, how to scoop up bunts with both hands, and the quickest way to return a wild pitch to the pitcher covering home.

We worked on receiving pitches, and he’d stand forty-something feet away and throw the ball to me, working it in there a little faster each time until he was throwing harder than my teammates. Sometimes it hurt my hand, but I’d never tell him that. I’d like to think that I knew that I’d return the favor some day, but I can’t be certain about that.

One day, a year before I’d see one in a game, my father taught me about curve balls. I was in disbelief, because hitting was already hard enough as it was, but now he was telling me that the ball can curve, too?

I got down into my squat and awaited the next pitch with anxiety. My pop let it fly, and, sure enough, it broke down and away. Since it started out on course for where the left-handed batter’s box would have been, I didn’t have a chance at it anyway, but I most certainly saw that ball curve.

I asked him to throw it, again and again, until I could catch it. I didn’t even think to ask him how to throw it myself, I was just so amazed that a ball could change directions in mid-flight and was engrossed in trying to get my glove on it.

Thinking back, the ball moved like a slider, with more horizontal break and just a little depth. I didn’t know any better and even now have trouble telling the difference, on occasion, between a pitcher’s curve and his slider.

I wouldn’t catch a breaking ball for another two seasons, but by the time most pitchers were throwing them, I was ready to catch them. The education continued, and before long I was rolling down on my knees to throw the ball back to the pitcher to save knee strength, framing the ball, and backing up first base on infield plays. I asked my father why he didn’t teach me these things earlier, as they are all basic and necessary. He replied that I wasn’t ready, and he was right.

I don’t know what made him think I was ready for a slider that day in the backyard, but it, like every other baseball lesson, seemed to come at just the right time. Every nugget I learned about baseball kept me interested in the game despite the plentiful failures I experienced on the field.

I’ve probably seen several thousand sliders since that day, but that one will stand out as the best, if not as the one that had the most impact on me. I’ll never sign him to a contract, but I am so thankful for the man who threw it to me.

Whirlwind Weekend I

Published by Bob Sanchez on April 14, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 1 Comment

This is my favorite part of the year, and I’m so lucky that it lasts for six or seven months. It’s hot outside and baseball is being played everywhere. Almost makes the winter worth it.

I was in fine form, kicking off the weekend with the school’s welcome and goodbye party for incoming and outgoing teachers. There is a Kochi tradition called henpai (literally “return drink”) which entails walking around the ballroom with a small bottle of sake, pouring drinks for several partners, and receiving one in return for each.

Given my plans for the weekend and recent events in Orange County, I decided not to participate in henpai and the teachers were disappointed. I was surprised at their reactions; they explained the importance of henpai to me as though I didn’t know it. It was as though they had forgotten the year-end party that I had set up when the official one got canceled, and didn’t recall the many other henpais we had exchanged in the past.

One thing a foreigner has to live with is people constantly illustrating Japanese customs like they are new. Japanese people seem to do things that custom dictates and feel that they can’t deviate or beg out of these cultural obligations. I’ve got the magic foreigner card that I can play, and as an adult, I decide what I do and what I don’t do. It’s usually difficult to get Japanese people to join me and exercise their choice.

Those that pull me aside and expand upon Japanese traditions think that I don’t understand completely, and it’s pretty useless to try and tell them that I am aware of them and choose to go my own way sometimes.

The baseball coach admitted that playing for him wasn’t fun enough, but he felt helpless going against the long history of Japanese baseball. He couldn’t call himself a proper coach without forcing the players to run miles before practice or keeping them at school until eight o’clock at night. He wants me around the team to buck the trend and make it more fun, and I’ve been unsuccessful in convincing him that he can do it himself.

Saturday began bright and early as I met a friend at the local driving range at 6:30. It’s a tiny spot with about 20 mats, and the range comes to a point a hair under 100 yards from the mats. It’s not much bigger than my parents’ backyard, but it’s close to home and great for iron shots.

The old lady that runs the range leaves it unlocked, and patrons arrive as soon as the sun comes up to hit some balls. They sign in and leave some money in a tray by the office door. There are no cameras, and there are even range clubs available to use for free. I love having people’s trust in this way, and it reminds me of the life and times that my grandparents talked about. People here hold themselves accountable and don’t abuse that trust.

I rented a car at 8:00 and headed out to Haruno Ballpark to watch an industrial league tournament. There were but a few players worth writing up, but the games were exciting and the sunshine and sea air were delicious.

The starter for Mitsubishi Hiroshima set down the first 19 players in order and could not be touched, but he hit the 20th batter as soon as I pulled out my camera to shoot him from the side. Two base hits found their way through the middle, and I returned to my station behind the plate to watch the pitcher battle with a 1-0 lead and the bases loaded.

He hit the left-handed batter with his 2-2 pitch, but the umpire called the batter back for not making an attempt to get out of the way. I called that a fair bit when I umpired, but as I watch more and more baseball, I’ve come to view that as a rather tic-tac call, especially when the pitch in question is traveling 90 miles per hour.

So my boy on the mound thought he got a huge break, but the hitter lined the next pitch into right field to put his team ahead 2-1 and turn the game around.

Late in the second game with the bases loaded and the go-ahead run at second, the pitcher picked off the runner at first base and the base ump called the runner safe. It was a lucky break for the trailing team, and the gutsy little guy at the plate jumped on the following pitch and hit a line drive headed for right field. The first baseman snared it and stepped on first for a nifty double play to end the threat.

What can you say about a game that lifts you up and drags you down again within seconds?

I jumped in the car and drove two hours to Takamatsu City to see my first independent league action of the season, the Ehime Mandarin Pirates against the Kagawa Olive Guyners. Can you imagine two Golden Baseball Leagues called the Orange County Kaki Kaizoku and the Long Beach Sakura Shotaigun? Those names would make about as much sense to us as Olive Guyners must make to Japanese fans. As much as Japanese consider baseball to be their game, the American influence is present in spades.

After a hike with Noodles and some new friends on Sunday morning, I drove three hours to the Tokushima countryside to watch the Tokushima Indigo Socks tangle with the Nagasaki Saints. Not a single prospect did I see in either indy league game.

The performance of all four teams underwhelmed me and left me hoping that the Kochi Fighting Dogs or Fukuoka Red Warblers run away with the league. They’d have to if they had any good players, because there was little defense, power, or plate discipline to speak of in both contests that I saw.

I sincerely hope that the new Kansai League, with its higher salaries and 17-year-old female knuckleballers, has simply drawn the talent away from the Shikoku Island League. Independent baseball is in its fifth year in Japan, and while there are now three leagues and 16 teams, the talent has to be there for the leagues to survive and serve a purpose.

There is little in Japan in the way of professional player development, and these indy leagues are supposed to fill that hole. Each of the twelve major league clubs drafts signs five to ten new players a year (compared to thirty to forty for each of the 30 MLB teams), and in a country with over 4,000 high school baseball teams, that means that the Mike Piazzas, Jason Bays, and Albert Pujols’ of Japan are not getting signed and must find other means of improving from a young age.

I know that the talent is out there, and I’d be on the train every day going to high school tournaments and practice games if I wasn’t teaching English to earn my bread. Guys who think they can play should be gravitating toward these new independent leagues, but the pressure to make money and have a stable life are so strong here that I think many boys give up far too soon. As far as I have seen, the independent leagues have not yet filled the need for player development and I am disappointed.

The industrial leagues offer a more secure future for players because they’ll have a desk job waiting for them at Japan Railways or Toyota if baseball doesn’t work out. However, the company hierarchy keeps many good first-year players on the bench and development in the company baseball system is rather slow.

I’ll still go and observe the indy leagues and speak well of the opportunity to continue playing in Japan every chance I get. It’s tough to find young guys who will take the risk and go all-out after a baseball career.

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Zooming along Japan’s wide open expressways is invigorating and gives me time to reflect on baseball and life. All I did at home this weekend was sleep; I got back after midnight every night. I wouldn’t have it any other way during baseball season.

Things Spring

Published by Bob Sanchez on March 31, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 1 Comment

Spring Training was awesome! My trip kicked off with an evening with my best friends. It was our sixth year together in Phoenix, and while it was just one night with all of us together this time, it was still special and enjoyable.

For the rest of the week, I wandered the minor league complex in uniform, asking instructors and coaches about the many facets of the game and scouting players, writing reports, and comparing notes with some of our other international scouts.

I continue to be amazed at how much there is to the game of baseball. Nobody knows it all, and people who think they do don’t last long in the business. Great nuggets of information are just as often right in front of your eyes as they are buried in yarns spun around postgame beers. To really get to the bottom of things, you have to devote time under the blazing sun during the day and time in the bar late at night.

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I came into camp struggling with pitch recognition. At the WBC Tokyo Round earlier this month, I got into it with my supervisor a little bit about a pitch that Yu Darvish was throwing. It looked like his slider, but it was the speed of his curve ball. My supervisor said that Darvish was throwing the curve ball incorrectly, and I insisted that the pitch was behaving like a slider so I was going to call it a slider.

Every scouting outing following the WBC found me wrought with concern about what I was seeing. I doubted myself and struggled to evaluate pitchers, and I needed to do something to fix the problem. My boss had me chart a couple of Major League spring training games from right behind the plate, and while it took me a few innings to let go and just see the game and see the pitches, I finally got it and restored my confidence.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. A scout’s job is to describe the action, life, command, and control of a player’s pitches, and sometimes you really can’t tell exactly what a pitcher is doing because it happens so fast. Yet, I also think there is a right and a wrong, and clearly I was concerned about being right.

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My role in camp this season seemed to be to explain Japanese baseball to several of the coaches and instructors. It was interesting to see how little we all knew about each other’s countries; even our Director of Player Development learned some very basic stuff by visiting Australia, Taiwan, and Korea for the first time last season.

The game has long been international, a fact impressed on me in the 90s with Ramon Martinez, Ismael Valdez, Chan Ho Park, and Hideo Nomo in the starting rotation for the Dodgers. Connections and understanding among people in the business has been slow, however, and I’m no different from anyone else.

I know a lot about baseball in my current region, but even the simplest things about baseball in Latin America are outside my focus. I’m trying to get sent over there for some education, and I think my organization is one of the better ones at exposing its personnel to those experiences.

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We invited a Japanese pitcher to camp this year, and he failed to make the big league club. It was still nice meeting him and seeing him make the most of his chance. It seemed like every time we met, one of us had something to go do right away, but we finally got together for dinner on my last night in town. He brought his wife, his young daughter, and his interpreter along and I introduced them to the Cheesecake Factory.

I asked him where he was going to live in the States, and he said, “Actually, I’m getting released on Friday, so I don’t know!” I feared a long, uncomfortable dinner, but he had such a great attitude about his situation that my fears were unfounded. Our club was giving him a few more appearances to impress some other scouts and hit the ground running in his search for work with another team, and he was going to do his best to market himself.

His six-year-old daughter has been learning English and was somewhat outgoing with it, so I gave her a lot of attention and English practice and she loved it. I heard her mother say something about nobody else paying as much attention to the little girl as I did, and the couple enjoyed seeing their daughter succeed in communicating in English.

They were very interested in my life in Kochi, and of course I raved about it like I do to everyone else. They understood the difficulty of travel, but I told them that it was all worth it. The pitcher had been several times before for spring training back when more teams trained there, but he said he’d never really explored the area.

By far the most interesting person at the table was the interpreter. His father is American and his mother is Japanese, but he grew up in Japan and went to Japanese school all through university. He spoke English very well and had only a slightly Japanese demeanor to him.

He had interpreted for the Orix Blue Wave right after Ichiro left in 2001, and quit that job a few years later in order to attend flight school in the United States. He is now a fully licensed flight instructor who can’t find work in that field, so he’s interpreting again until those opportunities arise.

The food was delicious, the conversation pleasant and enlightening, and the people just plain good. It was one of the best dinners I have ever had, and I hope that there are many more to come.

More baseball people have recognized me at Japanese spring training this year than last year, and I can see this summer being full of informative trips to the restaurant districts of Japan’s big cities.

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So much of this job is watching, talking, and making connections. Shooting the breeze with baseball guys gets easier as time goes on and I know more people, while observing games gets more and more complex. I hope that soon I am made able to commit more time to being a better scout and learning more about baseball.