OTC: Momentum Killer = Ponson
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JS
Ponson was given a chance because they wanted to push the arbitration year back on Hochevar without a doubt because even his spring training numbers were good enough to be on the team and be the 4th starter. I still haven’t seen one our local guys step up and ask Dayton Moore that question. It is sad when the business side takes precedence over winning and putting the best product on the field.
In regards to Jason Anderson I agree with you. He is my favorite person on 810 hands down and I would like to see him have more of a presence on one of the shows or see him move to 610 where they need someone like him.
Gavin
Greg-
You point out that you don’t like “babying” players because it creates soft athletes who don’t develop mechanisms for dealing with failure (I’m paraphrasing) only two days after you write a whole load of words about the sheer awesomeness of Zack Greinke. For the record, I agree that Greinke is awesome and I humbly bow down before his greatness.
But would Greinke be Greinke if he hadn’t been “babied”? What if Allard Baird had gone to Florida and instead of telling him to take some time and think about things he’d said “You get your ass back to Kansas City right now or you will never play again and we will sue you to recover whatever money we can!”? Would Greinke even have returned? If he had, would he have been worth a damn? Would he have signed that extension with the Royals even if he had returned and he pitched well enough for the Royals to make the offer? I doubt it.
I know you’ll say “but Greinke is a special case” and maybe argue that there is/was a medical basis to “baby” him and you’d be correct. There are special circumstances with Greinke and Royals’ management was smart enough to recognize how those circumstances needed to be handled.
But while it certainly doesn’t appear that Hochevar needs the type of coddling Greinke needed, neither you nor I know for sure what circumstances there are. Maybe Dayton Moore is being completely straight with us about why Hochevar isn’t being called up and maybe it really is just to delay his arbitration year. I don’t know and neither do you. But it’s inconsistent of you to applaud a guy who is where he is because he was “babied” but then decry it in another case where we aren’t privy to all the facts.
All that being said, I am looking for Hocehvar to be called up at 12:15AM on May 16th.
greg
Gavin,
Greinke wasn
BS
just curious,who was the last 19 year old that dominated the NFL?
Gavin
Greg,
I see your point, but to me it’s still a matter of changing the standards because he wasn’t ready/able to play at the big league level. You can call it medical leave or you can call it “babying,” but they have a long-term investment in a kid and it’s not really up to us to decide whetehr a kid is “ready” or whether he should stay in the minors awhile longer to make sure he can handle the big league pressure. It’s their call to make and I have to assume that Dayton Moore has access to more data and information on the subject than you or any of the talk radio guys you cover so excellently.
You bring up a point about how 19 year-olds can dominate the NBA (although I agree with BS about there not being too many of them in the NFL) but there are a few cautionary tales about bringing a kid up too early for his own good too. You can point to guys like Derrick Rose dominating the NBA but I can also point to people like Jennifer Capriati who came into the WTA Tour too early and despite playing very well immediately had her long-term progress harmed tremendously by being unready for that life. Admittedly, Capriati was, truly, a kid when she entered the WTA and no one can say how her life would have been different if she’d waited a couple more years but I’d prefer they are careful with Hochevar. As much as I want to see him pitching with the big club, I want him to have a long and successful career, nit a short period of success followed by alengthy period of him being a headcase because his development was rushed.
But that’s just a difference of opinion we have.
Gavin
Oh, and one other thing: 19 year-olds don’t “dominate” any of the so-called “Big Three” American sports. They don’t do it in baseball (although you may have a point about baseball elitism holding them back, but it seems to me that if a club has a ninteen year-old that can play, they have no incentive to hold him back) and they don’t do it in fotball at all (the last one to even try was Maurice Clarett and we know what happened to him). Maybe they do it in tennis, but the dominant young players in tennis are female players and I suspect that there is some physiological basis for that. Hockey gets you the occasional Sid Crosby, but he is far and away the small exception to the much larger rule.
The best argument for your propostion is the NBA and I would argue that while some very good players have come out high school or their freshman year of college, most nineteen year-olds don’t dominate there either. Yes, you do get some very good kids, like Derrick Rose, who played a year in college and then went league. You get the occasional Kobe Bryant or LeBron James, but for the most part they weren’t “dominant” until they had been around the league for at least a little while even though in cases like LeBron he was very good from the beginning. And for every player like LeBron James you can find three who came out too early and never made a contribution or who warmed a bench for years until they finally go good enough to actually really dominate.
And keep in mind, MLB has a minor league system. The NBA doesn’t, not really. They’re happy to have the kids serve their minor league time at a college and have that paid for by someone else, so you could argue that kids like Derrick Rose have already had a year in the minors by playing at an elite-level college program.
Anyway, the point is not simply that a nineteen year-old can or can’t play his psort at a high level. Clearly it can happen at least sometimes in some sports. The point is that the best players are the experienced ones, the ones who have learned to deal with the pressure. Paul Pierce does not possess the same physical tools he did when he first went to the NBA. He can’t jump as high, he isn’t as fast. But he is a much better player now than he was then. Let’s hope that Hochevar’s time in Omaha makes him a better player too.
greg
BS,
Good call. Not many 19 year olds dominating the NFL but my point is that many underclassmen jump from college to the NFL and succeed. There is no need for a four-year incubation period as there is in MLB.
Gavin,
My point on Greinke is that he WAS babied and it didn
rick
I know someone will make the point it was the ABA but Moses Malone dominated the minute he walked on the basketball court, 17 points and 12 rebounds. Incredible. Jennifer would of had problems no matter when she started playing tennis. By the same token Tracy Austin would not have had problems no matter if she had started late in tennis. Carling Bassett (for old timers) and Anna Kornikova were always hot:)
greg
Congrats to Sidney, he got it done tonight against Seattle. He lives to pitch another day.