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Our 1980's campaign would have been aghast at a visiting delver who claimed to play three or four positions. And there was no such thing as a multi-class Magic-User/Cleric. The rules on this have been bent beyond all recognition, both in D&D and real life (baseball) as well as pseudo-life (politics and married vice-presidents). In American politics, the idea of a thief casting spells appears to be gaining acceptance (context of the analogy most definitely intended). But in baseball, you can be sure that the Ben Zobrist concept is proliferating.
Here's an article from Beyond the Box Score. Usually when somebody is anointed the next Zobrist - and by "somebody" we mean Dustin Ackley, Nick Franklin, or Jed Lowrie - the player too agrees that there's no such thing as a multi-class Backup Shortstop/Hitter.
Shawn O'Malley, though, can play a real shortstop. At least, one good enough to back up a HOF candidate :- ) who has had Robby Cano pencil him in for 150 games. O'Malley has also shown a leather-tough strike zone, hitting .298 career in the minors and posting a 12:14 EYE in his first try at the real majors.
O'Malley was rocking a .418 OBP in Tacoma this year also. He doesn't have Zobrist's power, but in terms of solid offensive merit and complete versatility ... maybe so. What's the worst that could happen? A zing-around of the Cheney Carousel. What's the best that could happen? O'Malley provides us +1.0 WAR from positions that scuttled us last year to the tune of -2.4 WAR (Bloomquist, Ackley, Weeks, Taylor).
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Bill James Online is still a mere $3 per month. This week, he had two Zen observations about AAA players:
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On AAA baseball. Two days ago I saw my first AAA game ever (I've seen NY-Penn League ball before). I was struck by the significant differences in quality of play vs. the big leagues. The pitchers had a lot harder time finding the plate consistently, there were 3-4 times in the game where a "hit" involved some minor defensive juggle or hesitation (in other words, they would have been scored errors in MLB play). At one point, there was a pitch in the dirt with a runner on third -- the ball only went about as far as the left-hand hitter's batter's box, no chance to score. The runner on third quite properly propelled himself forward a hard stride or two, then backed off and jogged back to third. On the way back he dilly-dallied, was laughing about something, and the catcher threw down and almost got him -- a play you absolutely NEVER see in MLB. So 25 wins sounds generous to me. PS: If AAA teams played together as a cohesive unit for longer, they might do better.
Asked by: wovenstrap
Answered: 5/17/2016
Well, I think that's all true. It's bad baseball; it really is. College baseball isn't of the same quality in terms of talent, but it's a little more watchable than Triple A. Whatever else you can say about major leaguers, they are serious about their work. Some Triple A players are just putting in their time. Umpires call strikes on pitches that aren't strikes, and it creates an expanded box that the pitchers can take advantage of and the hitters can't control. It's kind of a mess.
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Regarding your saying that you think the gap between quality of the major leagues and AAA is greater now than in 1980: On a theoretical basis I would have expected the opposite, based on something else you've said, probably in multiple places, that it becomes harder to stand further out at the top as overall quality increases. At least one of the times that you wrote about that, it was in the context of talking about how the overall quality of ability in baseball has gradually increased over time -- and I figure that this tends to be a continuing trend. Unless the trend has been interrupted or reversed, wouldn't that tend to *decrease* the gap between AAA and the majors as time goes on? I know that this is a bit of a leap but I would have thought it follows.
Asked by: MarisFan61
Answered: 5/17/2016
Well, I've tried to explain this before. . .you're not that far from understanding why the talent level at AAA has gone down. When the major leagues took over the minor leagues and re-structured them into a player-development system (rather than a sports entertainment industry) they used the model of a school system, more or less. . .first grade, second grade, third grade, etc. They put as many teams at the top of the spectrum as at the bottom.
The problem is, that's not the shape of the talent. The talent is shaped like a pyramid; the system is shaped like a straw. There aren't as many players who are near a major league level as there are who are at pro-entry level; not nearly as many. What we NEED is like ten teams at entry level, then four teams at a second level, then two teams at a third level, which is Triple A. But what we have is one team at each of 7 different levels.
So it is shaped like a straw, rather than a pyramid, [with the top layer of the straw 500 yards in diameter rather than 100 yards across - Dr. D] and, like a straw, talent is sucked up to the top, rather than forced up from the bottom. But there is never enough talent at the bottom to replace the talent at the top, so the competition at the highest levels of the minors drops constantly backward--like a straw without suction. In 1970, the best minor leaguers were at AAA. Now AAA is just a holding company for guys who aren't quite good enough to play in the majors unless you're desperate. A lot of players now skip AAA entirely or just put in six weeks there.
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The Mariner fan's takeaways include:
1. There would be NOTHING unusual AT ALL about promoting Edwin Diaz to Safeco. Tomorrow.
2. AAA is, in general, across 30 teams, a holding company of major league backups, a way to finesse a 29-man roster. But DiPoto has taken this to a logical extreme, attempting to hold players there who are clearly good enough to play in the majors even when you're not desperate. It's not often you see a AAA team used exclusively to back up the major league roster.
2a. The M's hope is that Shawn O'Malley is one of these players. Steve Johnson notwithstanding, O'Malley is more or less the first test of DiPoto's Tacoma strategy.
BABVA,
Dr D
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