Hoping the Pirates are better next year! Joke

[2drfischer@gmail.c]

456865747362753536070 wrote: I firmly believe that the quality of talent in MLB today is equal to any other era.  There's an amazing number of gifted players who will become all-time greats for their physical skills.  But it seems that the overall baseball IQ isn't what it was in previous generations.  Baseball has always been a thinking man's game but there seem to be a lot fewer thinkers out there now.
I agree. I think players now skate through amateur ball, HS, and even college on physical skills alone. For the most part, players are bigger, stronger and faster than ever before. They aren't focused on learning the ins and outs of the game. They are focused on getting noticed and getting rich. The minimum salary for a first year player is over half a million dollars and self-promoting behavior gets players noticed. Amateur coaches don't want their star players to go elsewhere if bogged down with learning the non-physical parts of the game. This has produced a lot of players who are very gifted but addicted to self-promotion on the field--for some reason we no longer call this arrogance--and yet lack adequate baseball smarts.




Good point about self-promotion. It’s easier, and more fun, to come up with a schtick or some display of emotion after a HR, that gets replayed over and over on various sites, than it is to do the work necessary to complete a relay throw, or run the bases efficiently.