Tim Anderson

But would those athletes want it? Anderson took very long to get it, some guys like bubba sterling never get it. Sure if such a guy can get it he can become really good, the very top guys are all great athletes but would a not polished athlete play 4 years in the minors and then 3 years minimum pay before he makes money - if he makes it at all rather than being a running back in mlb right away?

Lorenzo Cain has a very similar story.  Was a 17th rounder out of Juco but didn't play baseball until his Sophomore year of high School.

Teams might be trying this more often than you realize, because the success stories are rare. (Just like most other draft picks.) I know it happened in my region a few years ago. Kid was an amazing athlete. Drafted in the 2nd round as an OF, but unfortunately he just couldn't hit a lick. Played college football after his MiLB career ended.

Btw did Anderson and Cain really never play baseball before HS? Not even tee ball or little league? 

Yeah, they’re out there. Sons team has a lefty pitcher in the 90’s that played 2 years of college football, then switched to baseball. I hope a club takes a chance on him and he gets drafted. He’s a work in progress for sure, but is making progress...

There's more to the story. It's not like these kids did not know what a baseball bat was and became good in a three year span. Anderson played thru middle school. Recalls his first LL HR as his best  baseball memory. Murray is the son of a former Major Leaguer. 

Either way, these were athletic kids growing up who were outside with neighbors, friends, older siblings playing whichever sport was in season. All day, everyday. Some just never got into organized baseball. We have a kid like this in our town. Played stickball with all the other kids, just never played baseball as it interfered too much with basketball and the start of football. He's on the HS team now and he's going very well. 

I actually think baseball players are the best athletes. They can't jump or cut like some of the guys in other sports but if you take a baseball player and put him in any other sport he will compete. Ask a basketball player to grab an AB against 80 mph and he has almost no shot. The footwork and slickness required from baseball is unmatched in any sport. I've seen some NBA/NFL guys try to throw a ball before. It's not pretty. 

In the 1970's the KC Royals developed the 1st Baseball Academy to train athletes for  MLB.

During my years with the Area Code games I organized a separate 900 team with players from the Nike Football and Basketball Camps. Several pro scouts send players from HS Track teams. During my years at MSU, three Rose Bowl QB's and one Hockey player played on the College WS team.

Bob

PABaseball posted:

There's more to the story. It's not like these kids did not know what a baseball bat was and became good in a three year span. Anderson played thru middle school. Recalls his first LL HR as his best  baseball memory. Murray is the son of a former Major Leaguer. 

Either way, these were athletic kids growing up who were outside with neighbors, friends, older siblings playing whichever sport was in season. All day, everyday. Some just never got into organized baseball. We have a kid like this in our town. Played stickball with all the other kids, just never played baseball as it interfered too much with basketball and the start of football. He's on the HS team now and he's going very well. 

I actually think baseball players are the best athletes. They can't jump or cut like some of the guys in other sports but if you take a baseball player and put him in any other sport he will compete. Ask a basketball player to grab an AB against 80 mph and he has almost no shot. The footwork and slickness required from baseball is unmatched in any sport. I've seen some NBA/NFL guys try to throw a ball before. It's not pretty. 

Baseball is a skills game primarily with the hands that has some athletic aspects but far outweighed by skill.  Clearly you are correct those skills would not be present for more than a subset of the football and basketball players and watching people try to handle a baseball that are unskilled is comical. 

But to say John Kruk or Jim Thome is an athlete compared to almost anyone in the NBA and most of the NFL minus some OL and DT isn't correct.   Every MLB team has 5 Kruk types sprinkled among the P C and corner infielders.  Hell one of the arguments for the DH is pitchers get hurt running the bases.  When there is an argument being made that you need to limit the participation of players because they cannot run in a straight line with nobody in their way - you don't have an athlete.  They have a strong lower body and lightening in their shoulder and elbow.  A rare skill to be sure - but not necessary accompanied by athleticism.

I would bet if you had just the guys going to P5 football schools for 4 HS classes as QB, WR, RB and DB that you could generate 50 MLB players and a dozen All Stars.  It would never work the other way around.  You couldn't put the baseball recruits in football and come out with enough NFL caliber players at the back end.   

Bo Jackson and Dion Sanders proved you could be good to great at baseball while being great football players.  I think there are many more of them out there than we realize.  Don't forget Frank Thomas was a TE as much or more than he was a 1B when he got to Auburn.

Guys like Beckham or Julio Jones jump to mind.  Could Gronk have been Judge before Judge?

Michael Jordan was less of a joke at baseball than people give him credit for.   Klay Thompson has a MLB brother who is not physical specimen he is.  There would be more guys than you think in the NBA but maybe even more of the guards in the 6' to 6'5" range that don't make it - of which there are 100's every year that would have probably been killer baseball players.

I will leave you with this....Tim Tebow is in AAA and did not embarrass himself in spring training.   He took a decade off from baseball.  Had he gone baseball rather than football immediately after Florida it is likely he would have become a MLB level player.  He probably won't now - even if the Mets bring him up to try to sell tickets in Sept.

As with the Murray thread - Milb is a problem for attracting this demographic.  NBA and NFL pay big early and there isn't a single bus ride from Abilene to Lubbock to be had.  So they will probably continue to spit out 100's of guys every year that might have had other results with a few years of bus rides.  It is too bad for baseball that this is so.

Tim Anderson is 25 and has been playing since junior year of HS.  Undrafted out of HS, undrafted after his first year of JC, then drafted after his second year of JC, then 3 more years in MiLB.  He's off to a great start this year and no doubt he's a great athlete, but it took him 7 years of hard work to make the big leagues.  

Baseball is a difficult game, and like other small-ball sports (golf, tennis) it takes time to master the skills to become world-class, if you ever can, and even then you still have to be a tremendous athlete, however you want to measure that (speed, quickness, athleticism, strength).  Even the most supremely talented athletes in any sport will have difficulty hitting a baseball without putting in the time to master it.  So even though there may be hundreds of really great potential ball players on HS and college football teams, it would take years to find out.  It's probably easier, if you've got the body (size, strength, speed) to jump into football.  There have been a number of track stars over the years that have done just that and succeeded very quickly.

Smitty - Anderson spent 4+ year in Milb 2014-2017 after being drafted in 2013 but your point is taken and totally agree which is why I said Milb vs big pay early in NFL & NBA is the biggest obstacle.  If MLB cannot find a way to be a better alternative to marginal NFL or NBA prospects - we are missing out because the game is less entertaining.

luv baseball posted:

PABaseball posted:

There's more to the story. It's not like these kids did not know what a baseball bat was and became good in a three year span. Anderson played thru middle school. Recalls his first LL HR as his best  baseball memory. Murray is the son of a former Major Leaguer. 

Either way, these were athletic kids growing up who were outside with neighbors, friends, older siblings playing whichever sport was in season. All day, everyday. Some just never got into organized baseball. We have a kid like this in our town. Played stickball with all the other kids, just never played baseball as it interfered too much with basketball and the start of football. He's on the HS team now and he's going very well. 

I actually think baseball players are the best athletes. They can't jump or cut like some of the guys in other sports but if you take a baseball player and put him in any other sport he will compete. Ask a basketball player to grab an AB against 80 mph and he has almost no shot. The footwork and slickness required from baseball is unmatched in any sport. I've seen some NBA/NFL guys try to throw a ball before. It's not pretty. 

Baseball is a skills game primarily with the hands that has some athletic aspects but far outweighed by skill.  Clearly you are correct those skills would not be present for more than a subset of the football and basketball players and watching people try to handle a baseball that are unskilled is comical. 

But to say John Kruk or Jim Thome is an athlete compared to almost anyone in the NBA and most of the NFL minus some OL and DT isn't correct.   Every MLB team has 5 Kruk types sprinkled among the P C and corner infielders.  Hell one of the arguments for the DH is pitchers get hurt running the bases.  When there is an argument being made that you need to limit the participation of players because they cannot run in a straight line with nobody in their way - you don't have an athlete.  They have a strong lower body and lightening in their shoulder and elbow.  A rare skill to be sure - but not necessary accompanied by athleticism.

I would bet if you had just the guys going to P5 football schools for 4 HS classes as QB, WR, RB and DB that you could generate 50 MLB players and a dozen All Stars.  It would never work the other way around.  You couldn't put the baseball recruits in football and come out with enough NFL caliber players at the back end.   

Bo Jackson and Dion Sanders proved you could be good to great at baseball while being great football players.  I think there are many more of them out there than we realize.  Don't forget Frank Thomas was a TE as much or more than he was a 1B when he got to Auburn.

Guys like Beckham or Julio Jones jump to mind.  Could Gronk have been Judge before Judge?

Michael Jordan was less of a joke at baseball than people give him credit for.   Klay Thompson has a MLB brother who is not physical specimen he is.  There would be more guys than you think in the NBA but maybe even more of the guards in the 6' to 6'5" range that don't make it - of which there are 100's every year that would have probably been killer baseball players.

I will leave you with this....Tim Tebow is in AAA and did not embarrass himself in spring training.   He took a decade off from baseball.  Had he gone baseball rather than football immediately after Florida it is likely he would have become a MLB level player.  He probably won't now - even if the Mets bring him up to try to sell tickets in Sept.

As with the Murray thread - Milb is a problem for attracting this demographic.  NBA and NFL pay big early and there isn't a single bus ride from Abilene to Lubbock to be had.  So they will probably continue to spit out 100's of guys every year that might have had other results with a few years of bus rides.  It is too bad for baseball that this is so.

Is this really true though? there are some big and unathletic dudes in mlb but they are mostly dh, 1b, c and p. Most other postitions are pretty athletic. Even corner OFs aren't big and slow mashers anymore like in the 1990s and  2000s, since they have the defensive metrics they put pretty fast guys there too (no more adam dunn's in Lf, albeit the phillies tried that last year with hoskins and failed horribly).

In nfl however there are spectacular athletes but every team also has like 5-6 really fat guys. I know nothing about football but I would guess that those offensive and defensive linemen are even worse athletes than MLB first basemen and DHs, those guys are really fat.

I guess I'm not buying the "baseball players aren't athletes" thing.  I see guys like Trout, Harper, Judge, Arenado, Gregorius, Correa and I see guys who are all 6'-2" to 6'-4" and up to 235lbs who are fast, quick and have tremendous athleticism.  These guys could have easily picked football if they were socialized to play it.  People love to point out the Sandovals and Big Papis as examples of how baseball players aren't athletes, but it's just as easy to point out some interior lineman in football as an example of unathleticism, and it would be just as wrong.  The days of the beer drinking, smoking athletes are gone.  Pro athletes are all superior athletes.

luv baseball posted:

Baseball is a skills game primarily with the hands that has some athletic aspects but far outweighed by skill.  Clearly you are correct those skills would not be present for more than a subset of the football and basketball players and watching people try to handle a baseball that are unskilled is comical. 

But to say John Kruk or Jim Thome is an athlete compared to almost anyone in the NBA and most of the NFL minus some OL and DT isn't correct.   Every MLB team has 5 Kruk types sprinkled among the P C and corner infielders.  Hell one of the arguments for the DH is pitchers get hurt running the bases.  When there is an argument being made that you need to limit the participation of players because they cannot run in a straight line with nobody in their way - you don't have an athlete.  They have a strong lower body and lightening in their shoulder and elbow.  A rare skill to be sure - but not necessary accompanied by athleticism.

I would bet if you had just the guys going to P5 football schools for 4 HS classes as QB, WR, RB and DB that you could generate 50 MLB players and a dozen All Stars.  It would never work the other way around.  You couldn't put the baseball recruits in football and come out with enough NFL caliber players at the back end.   

Guys like Beckham or Julio Jones jump to mind.  Could Gronk have been Judge before Judge?

Michael Jordan was less of a joke at baseball than people give him credit for.   Klay Thompson has a MLB brother who is not physical specimen he is.  There would be more guys than you think in the NBA but maybe even more of the guards in the 6' to 6'5" range that don't make it - of which there are 100's every year that would have probably been killer baseball players.

As with the Murray thread - Milb is a problem for attracting this demographic.  NBA and NFL pay big early and there isn't a single bus ride from Abilene to Lubbock to be had.  So they will probably continue to spit out 100's of guys every year that might have had other results with a few years of bus rides.  It is too bad for baseball that this is so.

I mean I just don't know how true any of that is. Just because somebody has height and jumps high does not make him a great athlete. While I'd definitely say Kruk and Thome aren't as athletic as Lindor or Trout, they are very much athletes. Not just fat guys with some skill. There also aren't 5 Kruk type bodies on each MLB team. If you want to use Sabathia as an example of a fat non athlete, he was going to play both football and baseball in college if not drafted out of HS. Thome was also an all state basketball player. 

As for the minor leagues causing the good athletes to walk away from the sport, that's just not true. It happened with two guys (Murray and Wilson) and they were better at football according to their draft spot. But middle schoolers aren't pursuing basketball instead of baseball because the ride from Montgomery to Durham is taxing. That isn't even a thought in until you are a potential pro athlete in another sport. 

On top of that, baseball is the hardest sport to succeed at. 40 rounds of players get selected each year and the majority never even sniff the majors. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player in the world, and even if he did break thru to the majors he would've been just another guy. Kids don't leave baseball because of the 7 hour bus rides, they leave because it is easier to be good at another sport. When one of the skills is height, you're already halfway there. 

Some things are unknowable - such as how many guys that never seriously consider baseball primarily for cultural reasons.  Probably a higher number than we'd like to admit.

The knowable piece is that baseball screws the players financially more than other professional sports do for the first 8 to 10 years of their career.  Murray has already made more in the NFL than he might until he is 30 in MLB.  It would have been foolish financially for him to pursue baseball.  Hell they can probably make more playing NCAA basketball or SEC football than they make in Milb.  Just ask the guys that played at Arizona.

IMO the idea of taking the better job means you couldn't do the other job better than the guy that has it - is a false dichotomy. 

It could be they have a better union. 

luv baseball posted:

Some things are unknowable - such as how many guys that never seriously consider baseball primarily for cultural reasons.  Probably a higher number than we'd like to admit.

My son grew up in an affluent area that had no baseball opportunities, so he had to "commute" to a nearby urban neighborhood for Little League.  There were probably about 90 kids in his age group when he started at seven.  As far as I know he is the only one who will play baseball in college (committed to a mid-major D1 as a 2020).  Meanwhile, I know of 6 kids from that group who are D1 football commits.  Some others going to JC for football, and others still waiting to here.  There are kids going D1 for basketball and track.  They all loved baseball when they were younger, but very few could work their way through the baseball advancement process that relies on expensive travel and instruction.  Its a shame to see kids who have the desire to play and obvious athletic ability thwarted by these obstacles.