Stars on Baseball’s Horizon

Joe Panik! Matt Duffy!

I have actually had a number of conversations recently with the opposite point of view. I think the real new stars are in professional basketball. Sure, there are new young players in baseball, but they are generic. Basketball, for many reasons, is the promised land for young athletes.

Baseball abides...

The players continue to arrive with the certainty of Spring, 'tho Spring can, and does, sometimes fails to produce. But now, Spring, and Baseball are international. If Spring is too wet and cold to plow in one place, it's dry and warm in another: Japan, Korea, much of Latin America.

The Old Guys may have not known where some of these places are or how to pronounce a Player's name, but they all would recognize the talent, ability and drive no matter its origin.

Baseball abides.

No love for Manny Machado? Come on Doug. At least throw his name in there somewhere. Otherwise, nice column. Just not perfect.

Ed Kranepool was brought up at 18 by the NY Mets

And I'm going to throw Carlos Martinez and Michael Wacha into the mix.
Go Cards!

It is really great to see another Doug Glanville Op-Ed. As always, it had a lot of know-how, been there knowledge, and was presented in an eloquent manner.
Mr Glanville, keep coming back.

http://thetruthoncommonsense.com

"... every time a hitter faces the same pitcher he increases his chances of success." Is that within a single game or is it true over the course of a season or even a career? Is it likely that a .250 hitter grows into a .275 hitter against a certain pitcher over time? It seems just as likely that the hitter is going to hit at or near his average most of the time. Or is the inverse true, where the hitter's average declines over time against certain pitchers?

DG, another metaphor/paradox for you: I find I adore baseball more as I get older. Why? Because it is really hard. Because even great players fail two out of every three times, and journeymen fail three out of every four times -- in my 50s now, I realize that the 8 percent differential is where life is lived. It is the poetry of agency. And the deterioration of reflexes is only part of it -- older players hear the clock ticking, and eventually it is the only thing they hear (which you refer to in the first paragraph). Younger players will have to wait to hear the poetry of the inevitable.

I've said this in the comments before (maybe I should send a comment to Margaret Sullivan), but it bears repeating:

The NYT needs to hire Doug to write full time.

Whoo boy. Your writing skills are awesome. Thoughtful, articulate...
I played in college and the Cape Cod League. What I got out of it were--certainly--great memories; but more important a deeply abiding sense of what this singular game is about.

I would have pledged my first-born child to have stood on a major league mound. Look--all power to anyone who gets to play in the Show. old, young, in-between. The game changes. Therein lies its strength. Did you see Koufax throw a strike to Bench in the ceremonial first pitch Tuesday? And then deGrom simply WASTING three of the best hitters in the game?

Youth must be served. But I personally would be just as delighted to see deGrom's show as watch an inning chucked by a guy named Niekro.

What a beautiful game, huh? I envy you having had the chance to play it at the highest level.

Write more, Doug. I'll be watching...

PS~ I bet you couldn't have hit my screwball!

Excellent article. I can't let it go without mentioning my boyhood idol, Al Kaline. Straight out of high school to the Tiger's organization - played in about 30 games as an 18 year old, won the AL batting title at age 20, still the youngest to have ever done that. 22 years in the majors.

He was also a great outfielder - I still remember him throwing out a runner from third at the plate - on a single.

He's also the only player I've ever heard of who turned down a raise - to $100,000 a year - saying he didn't have that good a year. That's one that I never expect to see another player match.

"Time served does not guarantee maturity" is now my favorite Doug Glanville quote.

More Doug Glanville pieces, please!

And I want to add - in light of your last piece - that I coached my sons through 10 years of baseball, from T-Ball and into teenage traveling teams. Eventually, we all took The Game seriously - perhaps too much so - but I love them and The Game to this day.

Mr. Glanville: You are, as always, thoughtful, graceful, and artful. Well done.

Mr. Glanville, true baseball afficionados appreciate the talents of all who play the game, not just the Trouts and the Harpers. I took my then ten year old son to a Phillies game in the '90's, in which you hit a game winning homer, and you instantly became his favorite baseball player. A couple of years later I sat in the outfield in the old Veterans Stadium and heard a Phillies fan remark that you looked more like an accountant than a baseball player, standing in center field. To myself I thought it's true, but how wonderful that you succeeded to the point of becoming a useful major league baseball player, capable of becoming my son's hero, and how fortunate it is that you are also a worthy role model!

Now you display a whole new set of talents, and again you excel. I'm happy for you, happy for my son, and happy for the beloved game of Baseball.

Without taking away from an excellent analytical piece, pitchers deserve a look. Now, early development and encouragement to throw hard when young and to throw such things as sliders and curveballs is resulting in an increasing number of young pitchers having Tommy John surgery after only three or four years in the Show.

Thoughtful column, as always, but there is at least one young player who was aware of New Horizons - Clayton Kershaw's great uncle, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered Pluto!

Doug Glanville is a sportswriter on the order of the great Red Smith: a philosopher and superb stylist first--and only then a commentator on the sport he played. But who ever commented on baseball with more insight, humor and love of the game? Smith and E. B. White (the latter not a sportswriter, but so what) would both call Mr. Glanville their peer in every respect. It's my hope that someday he will write a novel; I think he'd be as comfortable with fiction as he is with factual essays.

Mr. Glanville, thanks yet again for a wonderful column! Using New Horizons as a backdrop is inspired, and fits perfectly with my own excitement. Since early childhood, I've been fascinated by the planets, while learning about baseball and developing a lifelong love of the game. I was too young to remember when two NY teams left for the West coast, but recall my delight with that new team, the Mets! And after their dismal early years, celebrating their improbable ascension in '69. Wow! Your columns always bring me back to my love affair with baseball and my youth. Mr. Glanville, you are a very special talent: one who made it in the big leagues, both on the field and off. I'm especially grateful to read your column after the spate of depressing news in the rest of the paper. Thank you!

Hey Doug: I agree with your POV but that has to be the most tortured analogy in the history of tortured analogies. Keep up the mediocre work. Meh.

Doug Glanville (like me) is feeling old. Or at least older. As for young players hitting the MLB with a big splash, we’ve had them for decades. Mickey Mantle was 20, Willie Mays was 20, Rod Carew was 21, Joe DiMaggio was 21, Nolan Ryan was 21, Ted Williams was 21… on and on. It’s a long list. And now it’s fun to watch the latest, Trout and Harper and Bryant… Players change, the game plays on. A metaphor of life itself.

Although a SABR member, I believe it is important to emphasize the qualitative aspects of the game, as Mr. Glanville does here and in many of his excellent columns. Reviewed in the July 18-19 WSJ is a book, "The Grind" which apparently stresses the physical realities of MLB from the points of view of those who play and those whose lives are connected to the players.

It looks like I picked the right time to develop an interest in baseball! From my college days on, I looked down on baseball, angering my baseball-playing roommate by performing Bob Newhart's routine of the agent on the phone with Abner Doubleday. A few years ago, I watched as much as I could of my UNC Tar Heels advancing to the College World Series. That got me hooked on baseball at the college level, so much so that I watched the CWS this year even though the Tar Heels didn't make the playoffs. Last year my interest expanded to the MLB, and I follow the Atlanta Braves. Thanks for a great statement about the game, Mr Glanville!

The youth influx is the product of ridding baseball of performance enhancing drugs.

Mel Ott played with the NY Giants at age 16.

Stars? Glanville is a writing star, who writes about my favorite subject, baseball. So grateful whenever I get to read another one of his columns. Keep them coming.

I wonder if these young players aren't a result of the explosion of travel ball about ten to twelve years ago. The Little League teams you see on TV used to play 12 game seasons and head to the playoffs. Now, travel ball teams, really good ones, play 50, 60, or more games in tournaments every weekend.

In fairness, some park programs combine both, but the best youth teams in the Country are not on ESPN. Not by a long shot.

Quantitative analysis is important from a strategic perspective. For pure enjoyment of the game we need a qualitative perspective. Each has its place. Thank you for bringing these competing perspectives into sharp focus.

Wow! and Wow! What a grand way to start my Saturday. The introductory hook about New Horizons with the final paragraph returning to the theme and the marvelous thoughts about baseball in-between - fantastic writing. The second Wow! was for the t-ball column I missed in May. Laughed out loud several times as I remembered my kids' early days in sports and my more recent experiences in the stands at my young grandkids' games. You are gifted, Mr. Glanville, in many ways. Thank you for continuing to share those gifts with us.

Great piece. The juxtaposition of new, young talent and established stars is always interesting to watch and an essential part of what makes baseball so compelling.
To me though, the real genius of major league baseball has always been found in the relentless repetition of the schedule. Anyone may have a good game or a good series and any team may beat another on a given day but when you must prove your worth day in and day out against a set group of competitors, well, that's something all together different and unique in professional sports.
Players can't hide skill deficiencies and teams can't hide weaknesses over the course of a six month season played out against teams that are fighting each other in the standings.
Post-season baseball, while interesting, is no real test of baseball supremacy because a hot pitcher or hitter can easily skew the results in a format that includes teams who haven't won a season-long league or division championship.
Meaningless games, especially interleague play, with teams that are not competing against each other in the standings are not interesting. Neither are the play-offs, where the participants might as well be chosen randomly as include teams that have failed the test of the full season.
We need well defined leagues (or divisions, if you will) where the competitors play each other and only season-long winners participate in the post-season.

Math applied to spacecraft and reaching Pluto is a necessity. Math applied to human beings, not so much. One little bug in a player's eye at the right moment, a second of inattention in the outfield and injury lists longer than Mr. Webster's dictionary can throw a wrench in even the stars of baseball's stats. Stars may be wonderful and give us highlight reels but it will always be the absolute impossibly of reducing human players to numbers that keeps me watching.

You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me William Shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
I'll take Rembrandt, titian, da Vinci and Gainsborough
Ray Davies
You keep all your smart modern writers
Give me William Shakespeare
You keep all your smart modern painters
I'll take Rembrandt, titian, da Vinci and Gainsborough
Ray Davies

A few milestones that will not be broached in this "new" era are: season complete games, career complete games, seasonal shutouts, career shutouts, we probably will not see a 30 game winner or another 300 win pitcher in my lifetime. What we get in return is: pitching change after pitching change after pitching change, defensive shifts that if the knuckleheads used their skills could be destroyed by hitting the opposite way(ala Roberto Clemente) and lastly more complex mathematics as the new math becomes the old math applied by managers and GM's that can't begin to understand their root or meaning. Gone are the days of watching Sandy Koufax struggle through 9 innings without his curve and shutout the Twins in game seven of the world series. Now we get a 5 2/3 inning start, 4 holds and a save.

Baseball has become a young man's game. With the ban on steroids and amphetamines, older players are breaking down more, and are unable to keep pace with the young studs. No one is suggesting that Mike Trout and Manny Machado wouldn't be All-Stars in any era. But youth is the best performance-enhancer of all. I would also suggest that the amazing number of flame-throwing young pitchers every team seems to have are the beneficiaries of the slower reflexes and nagging injuries older players seemed to once avoid. And the increased numbers of awesome Cuban and Aisian players (all of whom are babies, or polished players in their prime) is yet another factor in the current changing of the guard.

Always a pleasure to read Mr. Glanville

I'm not much of a fan of major league baseball, but I'm a big fan of Doug Glanville. Since he has an apparent interest in space exploration, one imagines there are many other areas as well. I would be very interested to see his impressive literary skills applied to his keen observations on things outside baseball.

Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench - How could that not bring a smile to one's face?

And if we dig even further into the talent pool of upcoming youth, we find Melissa Mayeux. What! Wait..... a girl????

Why yes. With lights in Wrigley Field and pictures from a fly-by of Pluto, it really will happen someday, and with the inclusion of Melissa Mayeux on MLB's international registration list that someday is already on the horizon.

A wonderful column.
Growing up in NYC in the '50s my 2 passions were Baseball and Outer Space/The Solar System.
Pluto will always be a planet in my mind. I saw it represented at the Hayden Planetarium. They wouldn't lie.
Baseball: Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Elston Howard and Roger Maris all at the Original and best Yankee Stadium.
Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds.
Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, (Yes I did see him strike out 16 at Ebbets Field in 1956), Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese at Ebbets Field.

Not to mention seeing Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Ted Williams, Larry Doby and Ernie Banks.

And then in 1969 we Armstrong and Aldrin land on the moon....and the Miracle Mets win the World Series 3 months later.

Baseball, Hot Dogs Apple Pie and Outer Space.

Wow!

I think the game is changing, between the second wild card, and also the relatively high cost of free agent talent and in trading for experienced talent (often gunning for prospects, aka young guys). Also, given the long term contracts they have given aging players (ie Arod) or many of the Phillies, young talent is almost a requirement to make up for broken down long term deals. The only person he mentions I would question is degrom, he is 27, so is more in line with the traditional path of players, he came up at 26, so will prob have another 10 years or so, not 20:)

Young talent has always made its way onto the field, from Ted Williams to Bob Feller to Willie Mays to Derek Jeter. The challenge now is for that talent to stay healthy while lifting weights all the time, traveling all over the country at night and throwing out their arms. For every Mike Trout it is still nice to see a Bartolo Colon who can still play the game.

I don't buy into this narrative of "unprecedented" influx of raw talent.

Some years have more emerging stars than others, but I don't think there is anything especially historic going on. It's more a matter of hype.

For example, Adam Dunn basically did the same thing Joc Pederson is doing from the plate for 15 years ( hit .240 with over a hundred BBs and Ks ), and he only made two all-star games, probably as a replacement.

In other years, a guy hitting .240 with 20 HRs and 110 Ks at the break might not be hyped as the next Willie Mays, but this year he does.

And Jacob deGrom is not young talent ! He is 2 years older than Bumgarner, and 3 months younger than Clayton Kershaw.

Baseball is back...then again, it never left! This has already been an exciting season and I look forward to how the rest of it shapes up.

And Manny Machado.

Thank you once again, Mr. Glanville, for an excellent essay. It is so refreshing to hear an intelligent person speak about the qualitative dimensions of baseball when those on the MLB cable station spend so much of their (and viewers') time mindlessly hawking "StatCast" as if all those numbers really matter, as if quantification were truth. Thank you for continuing to speak so clearly about a great game with the insight that your experience provides.