San-Man with one of his best, which for him, is sayin' somethin'...

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Ackley is a STUDENT of the game.  This cannot be overly stressed.  Guys like Soriano, (Lopez, Yuni), or on a different plane - Vlad -- are physical freaks.

Ten-for-ten on your paragraphs there ace, as scored by the home scorekeeper :- ) what a great post.

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This "student" factor is way de-emphasized these days.  It's emphasized much less than it should be.  One thing that a mainstream writer would never do, is list a white guy as a student of the game and four other guys as physical talents... and because of the possibility of this territory, the entire subject is somewhat distasteful to the media...

Am sure that San-Man would list Josh Hamilton as a physical freak with an empty head, and Ken Griffey Jr. as a scholarly player.

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Point is, fans and writers don't talk about baseball scholars, but coaches do.  The reason that coaches love Willie Bloomquist and Mark McLemore types - it's an opaque idea to fans.  (Willie himself was just a losing coin flip; we remember Inside Pitch opining that Willie had a good chance to get better because of his baseball IQ.)

Ackley is a dirt-dog intersected with a video-room geek.  One of the reasons he went 2.

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Ackley is NOT a physical freak.  Ohh, he's gifted.  His ability to read ball/strike in a nano-second is certainly a very rare commodity.  But, what he DOES based off that ability is probably EQUAL parts natural physical athleticism and unwavering drive and focus.

There are probably HUNDREDS of kids his age with 100% of his ability in terms of simply swinging the bat and making contact with ball -- or in reaching out and snagging a ball with glove.  "Athletically" Ackley is a solid specimen of which there are hundreds scattered throughout the minors.

This is the only place at which Dr. D might veer off a bit; I'd say that Ackley doesn't have ARod / Josh Hamilton talent and leave it at that.

His physical frame is verrrrrrrrry ordinary, of course, as was Edgar's at age 22.  We once bumped into Edgar, when he was in his prime, and was shocked at how big he ... wasn't.

The things that Edgar had that other ML ballplayers didn't, was (as San mentioned) the brain wiring for perceptive reaction ... the wrists and forearms ... and the hand-to-eye.

Those three things vary even among ML players.

Give ten players a hand-eye test -- put a dot in 3-D space for 0.3 seconds and see how precisely they touch their index fingers to the dot -- and guys like Edgar will outperform guys like Russ Branyan.

So with Ackley, we're sure.  We'd love to see Ack, and Boggs, and Ichiro, and Pujols, and Manny, studied at the UW for hand-eye coordination.

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Ack and Edgar in the sense that Randy Moss is a freak, of course.

Is Ichiro a freak in this sense?  I kind of think so.

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Ackley's true genius - which made him the best hitter in college baseball - is above the neck, not below it.  He has an unrelenting drive to learn, to improve, to adjust, to GROW, to be just a little bit better tomorrow than he was today.

Some people do love to improve (as opposed to loving to win).

Getting "Into The Zone" -- the sports-psych syndrome -- has been shown to have more to do with improving results than wth winning results.   You can be in the zone and be losing ping-pong games 8-21, 10-21, 13-21...

For some guys, the game's the thing.  For other guys, stylin's the thing.  Ackley's in the former category.

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The only REAL question in regards to Ackley in the majors is NOT his eye - but his average.  Utlimately, he'll be able to run 100 points of patience in the majors.  That's a given.  The first unknown is what will his baseline BA be?  To carry a .400 OBP with 100 points of patience means he *HAS* to hit .300.  Within 2 years of hitting the majors, Ackley *WILL* figure out HIS personally optimized approach that pushes his BA as high as he is capable of.  Maybe that is .300 ... maybe only .265. 

Grady Sizemore being an example of the .265 with EYE path.

Dustin Ackley being an example of .265 with a .390 OBP -- at West Tenn last year.  Way to go San.

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Part 2

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