.................

I didn't make square contact with the cutter that Spec threw in there.  He went cutter on back-to-back pitches and this time we stomped on the back foot and squared it up ... :- )

Both Clement and Smoak were picked in the 1st round out of college at 21, signed during the summer and went to the Midwest League:

.... [series of age-arc parallels given ]

But . . . Clement did show the kind of stats that indicate the ability to play in the majors.  He slugged close to .500 time and again.  He drew walks.  He didn't strike out all that much.  In fact, he put up pretty much the exactnumbers as Justin Smoak.

My puzzle is: where is the red flag that tells me Clement is a bad bet?

Now I gotcha.  Thanks for leaving it out-and-over.

........

Where, in Adam Morrison's college basketball career, was the red flag that told you his game was not going to fly in the NBA?  

Morrison was possibly the best player in college, and there was absolutely no red flag, anywhere, before his arrival in the NBA.  That is because his game was more than enough to ruin any amateur situation he came up against.  But the flaws that did not hurt him in the NCAA, were exploited by bigger, quicker, longer-armed athletes.  

They took advantage of his physical shortcomings to prevent him from getting space for his shot, and Morrison lacked the Larry Bird-type compensations that Michael Jordan (!) thought Morrison would have.

..........

Danny Wuerffel was a college legend at QB for the Florida Gators, playing four years, going to four bowl games and winning them a national championship in 1996.   He threw for 3600 yards and forty touchdowns his Heisman year.

Wuerffel went undrafted (?!) the first three rounds.  NFL teams knew something.  Wuerffel was the very best quarterback in college in 1995-1996, but NFL teams knew that he would not be able to play, much less excel, in the NFL.

Here's the question.  Let's take a second and think about it.

Where was the red flag, in Wuerffel's college career, that told us he would hit the wall against NFL athletes?

There was none.

............

You could find any number of Quad-A ballplayers who ripped through the minors with no hiccups, but who then hit the wall in the majors.  Find yer own :- ) but one guy who comes to mind off the cuff is Calvin Pickering.  He was promoted to the majors in 1998-99.  

Where is the red flag in this performance?

At age 22 he went to AAA and hit 285/400/470, got promoted to the big leagues, and spent the rest of his life bouncing up and down.  "The Next Mo Vaughn" totaled only 95 games in the majors over 5 seasons.  Give him a fastball and he'd wear you out.  Give him something curved and blechhh.

.

Baseball is a sport, a contest between athletes.  It's in the same category as basketball, football, and every other serious sport.  In sports, you run up against this phenomenon.  A player moves up a level and, bang, his bread-and-butter just doesn't work against the new guys he's seeing...

For me, in most sports, that level was about junior-college or so.  :- )  I can pass the football real well if the game is slow.  Put it on fast-forward and I'm just not quick enough.

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