Perspective

In 2007 the Giants took Madison Bumgarner with the 10th overall pick in the June draft. Ben Kaspick posted on his twitter feed some screenshots of reactions (from the McCovey Chronicles blog) by Giants fans at that time:

You gotta love it. Here's more:

The moral of the story is that fans don't know jack! Perhaps it is better to say that I don't know jack and even "experts" are just guessing. The draft is a crap shoot and all you can hope for is that the guys doing the picking have worked hard and done their best. In a few years we'll know the results. Until then I'm happy to have new blood in the system.

Notables from the 2007 draft include #1 David Price, #2 Mike Moustakas, #5 Matt Wieters, #14 Jason Heyward, #27 Rick Porcello, #34 Todd Frazier, and #48 Josh Donaldson. There were 64 picks total if you include the supplemental round, and the Giants had FIVE more after the tenth (Bumgarner) pick. They were Tim Alderson (#22), Wendell Fairley (#29), Nick Noonan (#32), Jackson Williams (#43), and Charlie Culberson (#51). Those look like whiffs until you consider that Alderson was traded for Freddy Sanchez and Culberson was traded for Marco Scutaro.

MLB owners are assholes. Just in case you weren't sure which side of the labor divide I'm on!

--M.C.

Seven

The Giants had seven picks overall, six on the second day of the draft:

#49 Casey Schmitt, RH 3B from San Diego State,
#67 Nick Swiney, LHP from North Carolina State (a teammate of Patrick Bailey),
#68 Jimmy Glowenke, RH SS from Dallas Baptist (a Div II school with Div I baseball)
#85 Kyle Harrison, LHP from De La Salle High School in Concord,
#114 R.J. Dabovich, RHP from Arizona State,
#144 Ryan Murphy, RHP from LeMoyne College (a Div II Jesuit school in NY).

Those are the FNGs along with yesterday's 13th pick, switch-hitting catcher Patrick Bailey from NC State. I suppose we'll get lots of post-draft analysis by all the experts and we'll get to find out whether they did a good job or not! Or we can just wait a few years and see who makes the bigs!!

Welcome aboard, newbies. GO GIANTS!

--M.C.

Patrick Bailey

The Giants select NC State catcher Patrick Bailey with the 13th pick. If you wonder why the Giants would draft a catcher two years out of three you should take a look at the career arc of catchers! If I were running a ball club I would platoon at catcher. Never let a guy catch more than 100 games in a season, even better max him out at 81. Catching is too important and you can't expect guys to take that much physical abuse. MLB streamed the draft live for free, and the goddamn thing is a hideous spectacle, but I had to tune in--briefly--just to see what the Giants did.

Welcome aboard, Patrick!

--M.C.

No. 13

The Giants have the 13th pick in the draft. According to ESPN:

Day 1 of the draft will be June 10 at 7 p.m. ET and include the first round (37 picks). Rounds 2-5 (123 picks) will begin a 5 p.m. the following day.

There are lots of places to get information about draft prospects and whatnot. I'm not really interested in players until they become Giants, mostly because I have no scouting skills. One guy is as good as the next, until they aren't! I'll let the experts do the picking. I've learned over the years that I'm bad at prognostication.

I also dislike the draft, as you probably know, and think it should be eliminated. There is a good, short piece over at Beyond the Boxscore that sums up my feelings nicely. It is short. Go read it and then argue with me. (hat tip Baseball Musings).

At the same time I hope the Giants can sign some quality players! I hate having to root for a positive outcome for a system that stinks. But as a fan, of course, I hope number thirteen is lucky for the Giants.

I'm still optimistic that the increasingly acrimonious conversation between MLB and MLBPA is just hard bargaining. Both sides are digging in their heels, but I want to believe that is mostly posturing before they agree to compromise. I may be naive, or a bit too hopeful. If both sides want baseball to resume, they have to break the deadlock and find a middle ground. I assume both sides want baseball to resume and that both sides know the game might not recover if they don't settle. I have no idea what they really think, of course. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

--M.C.

MLB in 2020?

MLB owners presented a proposal to the Players Association about resuming the 2020 season. It features an abbreviated Spring Training to start in June, an 82-game regular season to start on or about the first of July, a universal DH, expanded playoffs, a 30-man taxi squad with a 50-man enlarged roster, geographically-close opponents, blah-blah-blah. I don't give a shit about the details! All those things are subsidiary to the health concerns and the extraordinary efforts that will be required to protect players, staff, workers, etc.

But the crux of the matter is money. It seemed, at first, MLB and the Players Association could agree on pro-rated salaries and other matters like reducing the draft from ten rounds to five. The new proposal, however, is a revenue-sharing deal. The players would get a portion of the media revenue generated by the games (since there will be no gate receipts). I expect this will be a non-starter for the MLBPA as it amounts to a salary cap. (The luxury tax is a kind of salary cap but it operates at the team level.) Players get a lot of flack about how much money they make, but that's silly when you think about how much money the game generates for the owners. Imagine being able to afford employees who cost $25M/year! That's right, you have to be a billionaire.

Chris Rock put it perfectly: "Shaq is rich. The white man that signs his checks is wealthy!"

Fans don't typically make such distinctions, and when the MLBPA (rightly) rejects the new proposal they'll be seen as greedy, out-of-touch, pampered athlete-celebrities. In the midst of a global pandemic, if the owners really think getting baseball going again is THAT IMPORTANT, then they should foot the goddamn bill! One day perhaps we will make all players free agents from the get-go and get rid of the draft, team-control years, arbitration, and all that un-American nonsense that prevents the free movement of talent. But that's another story.

I understand the urge to get things "back to normal" in the midst of this crisis. I understand the economic pain of the shutdowns. And I love baseball and miss it terribly. But I'm having a hard time seeing a practical implementation of a baseball season this summer and fall. I'd like to see MLB and MLBPA hammer out that stuff first (like, what happens is if a player/umpire/trainer/etc. tests positive for the virus?) and then argue about compensation. And MLB needs to get rid of their anachronistic blackout policy and make ALL the games available in EVERY market (like the NFL) or they are going to slowly strangle their golden goose.

South Korea and Taiwan are showing how it may be possible to resume professional sports. I wish them all the best of luck. I'm not sure we here in the States can use those models as those societies are more comfortable with social restrictions and government mandates, not to mention being quite a bit smaller. They are more able to implement a national strategy for containment and mitigation. Here at home we see more of an ad hoc, state-level approach with less overall coordination. Getting the national pastime re-started is going to require a great deal of coordination!

Stay safe, my friends.

--M.C.



p.s. I realize that South Korea and Taiwan are more properly The Republic of Korean (ROK) and The Republic of China (ROC) but those names are not only a bit ponderous but less revealing so I'm using the casual rather than the formal appellations.

There's baseball somewhere!

In Taiwan, in fact. The CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) season is underway. They plan to open stadia to fans--only 1,000 to start--tomorrow. There are five teams in the league. Taiwan has a population of 24 million in an area that's a little bigger than Belgium and a little smaller than Switzerland. The parks normally hold from 12,500 to 20,000 fans at capacity.

And in South Korea. The KBO (Korea Baseball Organization) opened their season yesterday. The KBO has ten teams. The Lotte Giants play in Busan and the Sajik Baseball Stadium is the biggest in the league and holds 26,800 fans. South Korea is home to 52 million people in an area the size of Iceland, about three times the size of Taiwan. There are no fans at the games and no word yet on when that will happen.

Taiwan reports fewer than 500 cases of COVID-19 and six deaths. South Korea reports almost 11,000 cases and 256 deaths. That's a very different public health situation than here in the States. It does, however, give one hope that a 2020 MLB season could happen in some limited form. I'm not planning to follow the CPBL (although you have to love the Rakuten Monkeys) or the KBO (although the SK Wyverns play in Happy Dream Park) so you'll have to use the links I've provided if you are desperate for pro ball.

Bundesliga, the top professional football league (soccer) in Germany is slated to resume on the 16th of this month. All matches will be behind closed doors. This seems like a riskier proposition. Germany appears to be ahead of places like Italy, Spain, and the U.K., but they don't seem to be near the level of containment that Taiwan and South Korea have achieved. I wish them the best of luck.

Stay safe!

--M.C.

MLB 2020

The Hall of Fame announced they would postpone their induction ceremony this summer and make it part of the 2021 event. It was scheduled for July 24-26. Derek Jeter, Larry Walker, and Ted Simmons will have to wait for their moment. (The late Marvin Miller is also on the docket.)

Wimbledon, scheduled for June 29 to July 12, will be played next summer.

The Olympics, scheduled for July 24 to August 9, will take place next summer.

The Indy 500, a American Memorial Day Weekend fixture, has been re-scheduled for August 23rd.

The Masters, originally scheduled for April 9-12, is now set to take place November 9-15.

What's going to happen to Major League Baseball? We've seen some ideas floating around about a possible re-start to the season but nothing is firm. I'm not convinced that any of the things I've heard about are practical, and in fact I would not be surprised if MLB, at some point, just pulls the plug on 2020. That would be unfortunate but probably for the best. I like that people are being creative and trying to imagine how to get the season going, though. When confronted with new problems you have to generate new solutions, and I appreciate the optimism and enthusiasm of the folks involved.

I suppose my main concern is the re-direction of health care resources. As we know testing for COVID-19 is still an issue (although LA just announced all its citizens can get tested for free) in many places and I'd hate to see ballplayers and MLB folks get prioritized over ordinary citizens. If entertainment venues and industries can implement the strategies needed to hold events without taking people and supplies away from hospitals and other care facilities then I could go along with it. Obviously there can't be any fans, at least at first, which seems silly to me. Fans are part of the game! I have little interest in "lab rat" sports. Perhaps limited audiences with strict social distancing might work, but everyone will still use the same entrances, same toilets and washrooms, etc. Doesn't sound very appealing to me. If baseball does re-start, I think eliminating sports-casters would be a useful improvement. They are pointless. I'd rather have a raucous audience than a goddamn talking head.

I feel for the stadium workers, the concessionaires, and all the seasonal and ancillary businesses (the pubs and restaurants near the parks, for example) that are getting hit hard by the closures. MLB will survive this--some of those folks will not. For their sake alone I'd like to see baseball come back. Don't get me wrong, I miss baseball too, but I don't NEED baseball. No one "needs" sports, fer chrissakes! I really hate all that "we need sports more than ever now" nonsense. People found ways to entertain each other long before professional sporting events took over the public consciousness.

Will the Indy 500 really run in August? We'll see. And if that looks like it will work, maybe MLB will resume in August as well. I miss my Giants, that's for sure, but I'll survive. I'm happy that the lights are on, the water is flowing, the grocery stores are open, and I can Zoom with friends and family. I'm fortunate to be in a position where the crisis has not hurt me much but I am certainly aware of the impacts it has made on many people and their families, and I hope it gets better soon. Lots of things will likely be very different when we "get to the other side" of this mess.

So, readers--what do you think?

--M.C.