Taijuan in an MLB Dunk Contest

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Q.  Does it increase Taijuan's All-Star chances that he could win an MLB dunk contest?

A.  Taijuan would not win an MLB dunk contest.  He might not finish in the top 20.  Well, not based on the video I saw, at least.  

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MLB players, well over 50% of them including pitchers, could play basketball and football at a high level.  The same is not true in reverse:  NBA and NFL players can't play baseball.  As fans, we have very little concept of how remarkable the MLB player is, as an all-around athlete.

Here is a great June '11 read from Tim Kjurkian.  Take a sec and check it out; you'll be glad you did.   ... We'll wait ...

... back already?  Okay, yeah, Mike Cameron deadpans that 70% of MLB players have dunked a basketball.  Cameron Maybin can dunk any way you call, meaning reverse, windmill, etc., I guess.  Dustin Moseley, a 30-year-old pitcher for the Padres, was asked if he could dunk and he was offended at the question.

Joe Mauer was asked about his (sterling) basketball career and said, "I was a defensive specialist."  Go look up his points scored?  22 per game. Heh!

The article says that Grady Sizemore ran for 3,081 yards his senior year of high school; is that a typo or do some guys get 300 yards a game as a prep?

CC Sabathia can dunk; David Wells, at his heaviest, could supposedly dunk.  Okay, that's for starters.

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Q.  You're seriously saying that MLB players are as strong and fast as, say, NFL players?

A.  Bill James was asked this question and, if you cough up the $3 per month, you get this kind of fascinating shtick:

 

 ... How much slower are the fastest baseball players than the fastest football players? Could Ellsbury, Carl Crawford, Reyes, etc., make it as a DB in the NFL? ... 
Asked by: Chris
Answered: 10/20/2008

The fastest athletes in ANY sport would be within hundredths of a second of one another in a hundred-yard dash, because they are all near the genetic limits of the human form.   The difference between their speed and an Olympic sprinter is a trivial thing, and they would all be in the same range, because if they were above that range they would be faster than the Olympic sprinters and if they were below that range they wouldn't be among the fastest men in their sports. 

Baseball players, as a whole, are much, much, much faster than either football players or basketball players.   Basketball players, as a whole, are ridiculously slower than baseball players; it's not even remotely close.   You can see this if you look at any baseball player who also plays basketball.   They're almost all simply too slow to play baseball.   Danny Ainge was too slow to play baseball.   Ryan Minor, who was a sensational college basketball player, and appeared to be lightning quick on a basketball court, was simply too slow to play major league baseball.   Michael Jordan was not really quick enough to play baseball.   Dick Groat, an NBA player and a superstar basketball player at Duke, was extremely slow, and Lou Boudreau, a basketball star at Illinois, was very slow.    The last basketball/baseball player who was actually fast on a baseball field was Billy Werber.    Well. . .Tony Gwynn and Dave Winfield, I guess, but I think of them as baseball players whose superior athletic ability enabled them to excel at college basketball. 

Football does have SOME fast players, a few. . .the wide receivers and DBs.  Those guys are as fast as center fielders. . .not faster, but as fast.   Some of the kickers are very fast.   But 80% of NFL players are like catchers and first basemen, or slower. 

There was a play in the playoffs (2008 - Dr. D) that Mark Teixeira made twice.  He was 10-15 feet off the line when a left-handed hitter hit a rocket, skipping off the group at about 80 feet from home plate, right down the line.   The ball comes off the bat about 110 miles an hour; Teixeira has about 6/10ths of a second to read the play, figure out how high the ball will be, dive and get his glove on the ball--and he makes the play both times.   Longoria makes the same play on the other side.   People think Kobe and LeBron are great athletes, and they are, but I'd like to see those guys take a shot at that play.   The ball would be in the right field corner before either one of them got out of his shoe prints. 

Fun stuff :- D

One time playing softball, the local high school baseball shortstop joined us, and I moved over to 3B for him.  A big guy hit a screaming one-hop single over the 2B bag. The SS dove and missed it by ... a yard.  Wow!  I kidded the guy.  "ARod woulda had that," although of course he wouldn't have....

The SS kind of glared over at me like I was a magoo, which, of course, I kind of am.  "No, that would have hit ARod in the chest," he snapped.  He was serious.

........

One time my wife joined me in the front row at a Rays game, with Boggs playing 3B at about age 50 ... there was a one-hop smash down the line.  Boggs exploded into vertical position, snagged it, looked at the runner and snarled, and fired a howitzer over to 1B.  My wife's jaw dropped and she stared, frozen, for about five or ten seconds.  "I had no idea," she finally said.

Major League baseball, on the infield, looks like racquetball, literally like racquetball, except in fast motion.

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Jim Bouton had a few pages in Ball Four about it.  "In those days I pitched, played shortstop and batted fourth," one reliever said.  "And was the star of the basketball team."

Bouton remarks, every major league pitcher hit fourth in high school.  Granted, Danny Hultzen did it in the CWS...

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Q.  Meaning what about Taijuan?

A.  The fact that Taijuan is a great athlete is cool, but I wouldn't make too much soup off of that oyster.

Dr. D has to urge caution about the basketball thingy, but that doesn't mean Taijuan ain't the schizz for other reasons...

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Q.  He's unusual for a pitcher, right?

A.  Well, even the ballplayers oooooh and aaaaah at Taijuan's grace and strength.  He's certainly more gifted than most.

But pitching and all-sport athleticism don't mean too much.  A lot of the best pitchers in history -- Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Gaylord Perry -- were klutzes or schlubs or both.  Pitching is a pretty specialized sports motion.

Then again, their being decathletes and ballet dancers, that didn't hurt Maddux and Gibson and Carlton any.  :- )

Comments

1
ghost's picture

...they make it look easy!
We watch basketball, football, etc and see them as herculean struggles...football plays look incrediblty hard...the pros don't make their sports look easy...they also strut around a heck of a lot more and do more to get their names on posters witha spectacular looking acrobatic photo. Baseball players look like they're playing catch...or beerball...on the TV. Seriously...A-Rod diving for a ball to his left at third base just looks the same to the naked eye as a kid in little league doing it (except bigger and faster, of course).
This is the main problem with visual defensive analysis and scouting. The scouts are very good at what they do, but there are limits. Ken Griffey Jr. made spectacular looking plays in CF but was actually not a very good fielder compared to his CF peers, even in his prime. Franklin Gutierrez makes it look ridiculously easy, even when he's making an impossible play, and we just don't get the sense that what he just did was practically impossible.
Baseball players look casual and play a sport with a casual cadence. It throws off our perceptions.
But that's why I love baseball...it's the purest, fastest, most physically demanding, most difficult, and most specialized sport in existance.

2

Like with golf - you could turn on the TV, see your first golf tournament, and you would honestly think "anybody can do that."
Which is a very important manifestation of BEAUTY.

3

Basketball - unleashed athleticism.  Seeing guys jump out of the gym, do 360 dunks, swat balls into the stands...it's all about how athletic it looks.  There are fantastic college players who cannot even ride the pine in the pros because their skillsets are less valuable there.  The rules of the pro game allow for athletic expression more than exorbitant skill.  Which is how you get so many pro players who are terrible free throw shooters.  That's not the defining aspect that allows them success.
Football - synchronized fury.  If any sport was ever a manifestation of the Id, it's football.  Football players are all great athletes too - you telling me another sport that has 6'6, 300 pound guys running 4.8 40s and broad jumping 10 feet?  But the design of the sport is to leash that athletic, hard hitting fury and attempt to have an intellectual victory over raw emotion.  It's a fascinating battle of the cerebral vs. the lizard brain.
Hockey - forced precision.  I want you to skate backwards at 30 MPH and use a stupidly L-shaped stick to hit a little round object into a small net guarded by a large man in even larger pads.  The game is physical and fast, with numerous line changes and steps on and off the field of play.  You get 2 minutes to get all your line mates on the same page and orchestrate an attack on this net where you try to club that round thing into a VERY tiny space as men attempt to drive you off.  It requires even more precision than baseball - 30% is a good success rate in baseball, but if you scored 30% of your shots on goal you'd never lose.
Baseball - elegant grace.  From watching the CF glide over to snag a ball in midair to seeing the double play turned against a guy coming in spikes up, to the simple beauty of round ball on round bat, the crack of hide against wood or into leather is a gorgeous thing.  It's why guys like Jose Canseco could never define baseball.  Being a large, lumbering hulk is not representative of the sport.  It's an elegant endeavor, whether at the plate or in the field, and I think that's why ugly defense carries such a stigma, and IMO one reason why we WANT defense to count for so much.  It just feels more genuine to the sport.
I dunno if being a basketball player helps Taijuan, but I think being a graceful one absolutely does.
Love the thread, and the first post ghost.
~G

4

... turning the head left and right, your post makes me want to re-think James' glorification of the baseball athlete.  You do wonder, in fairness, whether he's attended an NFL combine :- )
Just the same, the racquetball-explosiveness combined with the hand-eye coordination, creates a certain flavor of athleticism all its own...
...............
Grace, balance, and body control are CERTAINLY very important to pitching, especially to command in the strike zone.  Think Moyer, Maddux, Palmer .... James Paxton :- )

5

makes me think that world-class tennis players might as well be triathletes.  Joker and Rafa going 6 hours of explosive athletics and sprinting was crazy.  Trust me, there's no way Griffey EVER did that.  Baseball players aren't FIT.  They are conditioned for the sport they play, which involves a lot of standing around. 
Baseball has a lot in common with golf:  An incredibly hard endeavor made easier by a certain amount of grace and the ability to adjust a swing to the conditions presented.
It's more athletic simply because nobody in golf has to dive anywhere (unless someone shouts 'fore' anyway) or fight to prevent the other person's shot.  Baseball requires an insane amount of calculations in a very short span, and the ability to replicate motions that have become drilled instinct so perfectly that all those calculations can be performed without thinking about them.
Grace = hard work x purpose.  Whether it's martial arts or lumberjacking, grace takes thousands of hours of work to make one incredibly hard action seem simple and effortless.
That's why I love baseball.  In no other sport do two people square off in quite the same display of one-swing-takes-all competition.
Except that in baseball even when you hit it perfectly you can still lose.
It's a wonderful game. :) When's the first telecast again?
~G

6
Steen.'s picture

But 80% of NFL players are like catchers and first basemen, or slower.
I tend to think of James as brilliant in all things, but his thoughts on football are ridiculous.  It makes me wonder if he has a bit of the  baseball snob who sneers at the brutality of football in him. The NFL is littered with Nth degree power/speed athletes. James is right that almost all athletes if they tried baseball would FAIL, but how many MLB's would be *dead* after an NFL game?  David Eckstein is what a 5'6" guy can look like in MLB,  Darren Sproles is what a 5'6" guy *must* look like to suceed in the NFL.  Sproles is a mutant, but he's far from the only example.

7

This is why I love good defense in baseball, even if it less valuable than hitting or pitching for the purposes of winning. The aesthetic pleasure derived from a nice defensive play is a huge reason I watch.
Well said, all.

8

Roscoe Tanner was on Johnny Carson talking about Borg, and Tanner said he went into a match with Borg thinking, well, I can groundstroke as well as he can.  I'll give up my serve-and-valley and just outwait him.
According to Tanner, the first point goes 40-some strokes back and forth :- ) and ... dramatic pause ... "I'm getting TIRED out there!" ... and figured out why nobody tried to do that against Borg.
Wonder whether tennis players or soccer players have better wind.

9

Infield defense in the major leagues, we're truly talking about pushing the limits of human microevolution, wouldn't you think Dr. G?
You remember Jack Wilson playing 2B last year, taking a grounder going to the bag, kicking the base miraculously, and making the throw falling into LF... a shortstop like that is definitely worth the price of admission ...

10
muddyfrogwater's picture

Franklin Gutierrez - A wide reciever, perhaps a gifted NCAA stand out.
!chiro - I'm thinking figure skater.
Casper Wells - Dude looks kind of tough and gritty. MMA Ground and pound style.
Justin Smoak - Defensive end all ther way.
Dustin Ackley - A two gear swing, he swings change up and can ratchet that stroke to fast ball mid-swing. A fencer?
Jesus Montero - Hockey goalie? It makes sense.
Chone Figgins - Everybody was kung fu fighting. Those cats were fast as lightning.
Mike Carp - He looks just like a rugby player.
Brendan Ryan - I bet he'd be fun to party with. I'm thinking beach, keg of beer, and bikini sling shot competition.
Pitchers - Rush the mound at your own peril, most are heavy handed with long limbs.

12

"What you can't see is in the training room," Jack Zduriencik shared with me this morning. "He is doing things in there, jumping, (agility) drills, things that others can't. He is that type of athlete."
We shouldn't discount that Walker really is one of those freakish "Tony Gonzalez" types of athletes.
 
 

13

Right Grizz, wasn't saying he's not.  Taijuan draws ooohs and aaaahs even from the other Mariners.
Was just commenting that there are a lot of freaks in baseball, a lot more than we realize.

14

I guess it sort of depends on the era.  If James hasn't watched football in ~20-30 years, he might not have been so far off the mark.  It is pretty incredible how players have gotten so big and yet faster and more athletic simultaneously.
Reminds me of a play I saw in person in the early 2000s.   I was in the 2nd row on the 1B side.  Olerud was playing 1B, and a pop-up came over our way, just a little out of my reach into the first row.  I was looking up, and the ball was in the air only a few seconds.  As I was looking up, I heard a loud wham-  Olerud crashing into something (I think it was the ground tarp) to get to the ball.  For a "big slow" guy, he covered an unbelievable amount of ground in no time.  I was pretty amazed.

16

I can totally see how people end up interfering inadvertently on plays like that.  There was *no way* in my mind Olerud could get to that ball.

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