Innholdsfortegnelse for March 23, 2018 i Baseball America

OCT. 25-NOV. 9, 1987 The Twins' Willie Banks, the highest player ever drafted from New Jersey, makes his professional debut in the Rookielevel Appalachian League Willie Banks awoke one morning in January 2009 to the startling realization that his late mother had spoken to him in his sleep. He remembered her words from the dream vividly. “Get the hell off the damn couch,” Banks recalls his mother, Ethel, telling him in his sleep. “She felt from upstairs that her baby boy wasn’t doing so well,” Banks said. “I had been depressed before, mad and (ticked) off before, but it was nothing like this. It was a cycle I couldn’t come out of. I just lost it and got to the point where I didn’t care about anything.” At age 40,…

BASEBALL AMERICA BUILT ITS REPUTATION by covering prospects and the draft, and with four decades of focus on scouting and player development, we have a unique perspective on the major league game. And just like any other group of baseball fans, BA editors have opinions and predictions for the upcoming season. In this space, we will share with readers our outlooks and insights on a number of issues. The key to the abbreviations is as follows: Ben Badler (BB), Teddy Cahill (TC), Carlos Collazo (CC), J.J. Cooper (JJC), Matt Eddy (ME), Kyle Glaser (KG), Kegan Lowe (KL) and Josh Norris (JN). WHICH TEAM WILL BE THE BIGGEST SURPRISE OF 2018? WHITE SOX: Baseball is so stratified in 2018 that true surprises are difficult, but the rebuilding White Sox are farther…

1. IF YOU’RE GOING TO REBUILD, GO ALL IN “I think the big thing is either you’re all-in, or don’t do it at all,” said Allard Baird, who took over as Royals GM in the midst of the franchise’s sixth consecutive losing season in 2000. “You can’t just piecemeal. You can’t make a surface sign to say, ‘OK, we’re still trying to win, but we’re rebuilding.’ I think you have to be totally committed to it. “I hold myself accountable to that, just being able to do a better job of convincing ownership that we needed to rebuild completely. And obviously I did not do a good job of that.” In a six-month span in 2001, Baird traded mid-20s outfielders Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye, as well as shortstop Rey…

COLUMNIST, MLB.COM tracy.ringolsby@ baseballamerica.com The Brewers made their only World Series appearances in 1982. Two years and 121 days after the final out in Milwaukee’s Game 7 loss to the Cardinals, David Stearns was born on Feb. 18, 1985. And today, heading in his third full season as the general manager of the Brewers, the 33-year-old Stearns is the man charged with putting the pieces together to get the club back into the Fall Classic—and more. “I have seen some really good Brewers teams, especially in the last decade,” Stearns said, “but I have never seen a Brewers team in the World Series. My goal is to not only see them get back to a World Series, but to take that final step to a championship.” Stearns has wasted little…

Have you ever found yourself craving ballpark food in the dead of winter, long after the minor league season has ended and the stadium concession stands have closed up shop until the spring rolls around again? In most places, you’re out of luck. In Daytona Beach, Fla., and Eugene, Ore., however, there’s a solution. Both the Tortugas and the Emeralds in the past year have introduced their own food trucks, which are capable of bringing ballpark delicacies to their communities all year long. “It’s become a pretty large trend around America,” Tortugas president Ryan Keur said of food trucks, “and we’ve seen it here with the festivals all around central Florida and Daytona Beach, which prides itself on a couple of massive events each year. We wanted to try to…

AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST 1. New York Yankees 2. Boston Red Sox 3. Toronto Blue Jays 4. Tampa Bay Rays 5. Baltimore Orioles CENTRAL 1. Cleveland Indians 2. Minnesota Twins 3. Chicago White Sox 4. Detroit Tigers 5. Kansas City Royals WEST 1. Houston Astros 2. Los Angeles Angels 3. Texas Rangers 4. Seattle Mariners 5. Oakland Athletics WILD CARDS: Red Sox, Angels PENNANT: Indians MVP: (1) Mike Trout, Angels; (2) Giancarlo Stanton, Yankees; (3) Carlos Correa, Astros CY YOUNG AWARD: (1) Corey Kluber, Indians; (2) Chris Sale, Red Sox; (3) Luis Severino, Yankees ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: (1) Shohei Ohtani, Angels; (2) Willie Calhoun, Rangers; (3) Gleyber Torres, Yankees NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST 1. Washington Nationals 2. New York Mets 3. Philadelphia Phillies 4. Atlanta Braves 5. Miami Marlins CENTRAL 1.…

NEW YORK YANKEES At least one scout has compared 17-year-old righthander Luis Medina with Luis Severino, making him the Yankees’ pitching prospect with the highest ceiling. But righty Freicer Perez shouldn’t be discounted, because he has pitched himself into position where other clubs have called general manager Brian Cashman about the 21-year-old. Perez, who is 6-foot-9, 240 pounds and signed out of the Dominican Republic in 2014, went 9-0, 2.41 in a 14-game stretch at low Class A Charleston from June 14 to Aug. 31 last year. During that streak Perez worked 78.1 innings, allowed 47 hits, fanned 78 and limited batters to a .175 average. “He has some work to do with his delivery, but he is definitely a prospect,” said a scout who saw Perez at Charleston. While…

The rosters for Major League Baseball’s annual international showcase at Estadio Quisqueya in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, were stacked with most of the top international prospects in the 2018 class. The following players who participated in the Feb. 21-22 event are the names to know for the signing period that opens on July 2. Richard Gallardo RHP, Venezuela B-T: R-R. HT: 6-1. WT: 187. TRAINER: Andres Veliz GAMES: 7 BF, 6 SO, 0 BB, 0 H While Gallardo wasn’t the hardest thrower at the event, he had the best combination of fastball, offspeed stuff and control. He used that blend of power and feel to perform better than anyone at the event, striking out six of the seven hitters he faced and getting the other one to ground out to…

Dux Sports has already made its presence known in its home of Puerto Rico, but will now usher in a new era on the hands of Angels catcher Rene Rivera. “It is a dream come true to ink our first major league deal with a Puerto Rican player,” said Richard Gonzalez, Dux co-founder and CEO. “We are very excited to be working with an amazing catcher with many years of experience in the game. We cannot wait to see other players joining the club.” The deal will put Dux batting gloves on Rivera, but the Dux “SWAG” has made inroads throughout its native land with a combination of compression pants, arm sleeves, wristbands and headbands, along with training undershirts, sunglasses and custom uniforms. Dux Sports started as a passion project,…

Throughout the season, BA will present position rankings of the best college players in the draft class. In this issue, we focus on second and third basemen, two positions with a star player at the top but not much depth. SECOND BASE 1. Nick Madrigal, Oregon State: One of two players voted as a unanimous Preseason All-American by major league scouting directors, Madrigal was off to a sensational start before suffering a wrist injury in the second weekend. He’s still clearly the best second baseman thanks to his plus hitting ability, overall baseball instincts and speed. 2. Devin Mann, Louisville: Mann has stepped into a larger role in Louisville’s lineup this season and is off to a strong start. Listed at 6-foot-3, 205 pounds, he is bigger than a typical…

Teams coming off losing seasons occasionally wade into the expensive end of the free agent pool, but generally the marquee players in each free agent class gravitate to the top teams. This is only natural given top teams have the most to gain from purchasing a few extra wins in the marketplace. Among 2017 free agents, Yu Darvish signed with the 92-win Cubs, J.D. Martinez signed with the 93-win Red Sox and Lorenzo Cain signed with the 86-win Brewers. Unsigned free agents such as Jake Arrieta, Alex Cobb, Lance Lynn and Mike Moustakas could still land with contenders. The same is not true for two other prominent free agents. The 28-year-old Eric Hosmer signed for the most years (eight) and most total dollars ($144 million) in his free agent class,…

@JOE_SHEEHAN There have always been teams looking less toward the current season’s standings and more toward future ones—what we colloquially call “rebuilding.” One of the earliest sabermetric findings was that wins that don’t put you into contention, say the ones between 65 and 81, also don’t move the needle when it comes to attendance and revenue. The 2012 Collective Bargaining Agreement enhanced the incentives to lose, providing bad teams with higher draft budgets to go with their higher picks, and higher budget caps in the international market. “Rebuilding” gave way to “tanking,” where for teams at the bottom of the league, the incentives to lose became higher than the incentives to win. Coupled with aggressive revenue sharing and sharply higher income streams nationally, many teams have gone through multi-year cycles…