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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.

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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.  :- )