FALL BALL '21

 

               Of all the things whose loss depressed me during the pre-vax pandemic days of last year, the Arizona Fall League was near the top of the list. This annual baseball exercise for young minor leaguers was scratched, leaving a giant hole in my fall schedule. I rejoiced when it returned this year, back at its October-November calendar place after starting in too-hot September in 2019. By me, autumn is the best time of year in the desert, warm but not hot and with the bluest skies on the planet. If you’re planning a trip it’s the best time to come.

               The league ends its six-week, six-team, 36-game run on Saturday with its championship game, but team results are secondary to the league’s real purpose, which is to serve as a finishing school for some of the game’s top prospects in the 21-to-25-year-old age range. Each team sends seven to compete against their peers under the eyes of scouts, real and self-appointed. I’m one of the latter.

               MLB, which picks up the tab for the thing, also uses it to test proposed game changes. The big one this year was requiring two infielders on each side of second base when a ball is pitched, eliminating the radical shifts teams use to squelch pull hitters. The league batting average after four weeks was .267, against the Majors’ 2021 regular-season .244, so it seems to have worked in hyping offense. I hope they keep it.

               The size of the bases was increased to 18 inches square from 15, to prevent some first-base collisions and give base stealers a bit of a boost. Another good move, says I. A “robo ump” home-plate camera system to relay ball-strike calls to a live ump was installed at one of the league’s six ballparks, Salt River Fields in Scottsdale. It operated seamlessly; I judged that most fans didn’t know it was working until they were told. Its game-wide adoption is inevitable.

               Pitch clocks of 15 seconds with bases empty and 17 seconds with runners on were used, and enforced often enough to be noticed. I’ve seen no figures on game times but noticed no speedup. Lots of walks (22 in one game, 17 in another) was one reason, lots of strikeouts (to be expected these days) was another. Those usually are underestimated in discussions of baseball’s time problems.

               Talentwise, no player jumped out in the way Vlad Guerrero Jr., Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado did in previous AFL go-rounds, but there were B-plus prospects aplenty. This year’s crop was headed by SPENCER TORKELSON, who was the No. 1 pick in the 2020 amateur draft, by the Detroit Tigers, after breaking Barry Bonds’ and Bob Horner’s home run records at Arizona State U. Just about all No. 1s appear in the bigs soonish and he’ll be no exception. The big first-baseball’s early-minors stats didn’t dazzle but he hit well here, going 9 for 20 with 8 walks and 4 strikeouts in seven games. Then he sprained an ankle, never to return, but it was apparent he got what he came for.

               The best prospect I saw was outfielder LARS NOOTBAR, 24, of the St. Louis Cardinals, but he was a ringer, having played 58 games with the Cards last season. The left-handed hitter is a finished product in the field and at the plate, where he showed power that belied his trim physique. One home run he hit at Camelback Park in Glendale cleared the fence and berm behind it and rattled around on the pavement in front of the Chicago White Sox’s spring headquarters building. He also has his own cheer—when he came to bat Cards’ fans on hand shouted “Noot! Noot!”

               The best all-around player I saw was outfielder ELIJAH DUNHAM, a New York Yankees’ chattel. Just 22 years old, he’s among league leaders in hitting (at .348) and had walked 13 times with just 8 Ks. He’s a perpetual-motion machine on field; in one game I saw he had three hits, walked, was hit by a pitch, stole a base and threw out a runner at second from left field. He also tore his pants and, probably, leads the league in dirty uniforms.

               The biggest surprise has been NELSON VELASQUEZ, a 22-year-old outfielder from Puerto Rico and property of my Chicago Cubs. Ranked as the Cubs’ 29^th best prospect coming in, and a 2017 5^th round draft choice, he’s hitting .366 with a league-leading 9 home runs and 1.194 OPS, which stands for on-base plus slugging. He has a sturdy build and quick, compact right-handed swing. Having stripped their roster to its skivvies the Cubs have plenty of holes to fill and can’t afford to ignore him.

               JETER DOWNS, 23, named to play baseball, is a middle infielder in the Boston Red Sox chain who hits stronger than his slim build. The mellifluously named J.J. BLEDAY, 23, the 4^th player picked in the 2019 draft by the Miami Marlins out of Vanderbilt U., oozes power and potential. Outfielder MATT WALNER, 23, from the Minnesota Twins’ chain, is a big guy (6-foot-5) who hits big and strikes out a lot, which makes him a typical major leaguer. First baseman JUAN YEPEZ, 23, from Venezuela, signed at age 16 by the Atlanta Braves and traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, and with five minor-league seasons under his belt, is near the top of every AFL hitting category.

 There are three catcher spots on just about every 26-man MLB roster, so WILLIE MACIVER’s prospects look good. He’s 25, a bit elderly for the AFL, but catchers take time to develop. The Colorado Rockies’ possession is speedy for the position, having stolen 20 bases at the AA level last season.

Pitchers are hard to track in the AFL because they appear only every fourth or fifth game, and then usually for short stints, but I saw a few standouts. More good news for the Cubs came from CALEB KILLIAN, 24, a tall righthander they obtained from the San Francisco Giants in the Kris Bryant trade. He got bashed for 8 earned runs in his 2-inning debut here but then pitched 12 scoreless innings. His minor-league card shows 112 strikeouts and just 13 walks with three Class A and AA teams last season. He has outshone RYAN JENSEN, a higher-touted Cubs’ pitching prospect and the team’s No. 1 2019 draft choice. Jensen struck out the first two batters he faced in a game last Monday, then gave up 10 hits and a walk to the next 17. Online speculation the next day concluded he must have been tipping his pitches.

R.J. DABOVICH, 22, from the Giants’ chain, throws in the high 90s, strikes out many and walks many, too. He was fun to watch. SETH CORRY, 23, also with the Giants, had the best curve ball I saw and wasn’t afraid to use it. JOHAN DOMINGUEZ, 25, from the Dominican Republic and the Chicago White Sox, has strikeout stuff.

There’s a week left in the season so catch a game if you’re in the neighborhood. You, too, can be a scout.

 

 

 

NEWS & VIEWS

 

               NEWS-- BRAVES, ASTROS SQUARE OFF IN THE WORLD SERIES

               VIEW-- YAY, BOO

               My rules for rooting in matters of sport are simple. As a born and bred Chicagoan, and resident there for 50 years, I root for any team that has the city’s name on its jerseys. Period.

               As a kid I had teams I hated, mainly the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals. That was because they regularly beat up on the teams I rooted for. I also thought the members of those teams were bad people, on general principles rather than because of any specific reasons. Virtue, I believed, was the exclusive province of my Cubs, White Sox, Bears, etc. How could it be otherwise?

               As an adult, and later a sportswriter, I tempered the “hate” part of the above equation, having learned that good guys and jerks are about equally distributed among our sporting entities. My anti-Yankee stance in particular was blunted by my contact with Joe Torre, the team’s manager in the late 1990s and early ‘00s, whom I found to be a pleasant and gentlemanly person. Now I’m firmly neutral about the Yanks, as with other non-Chicago teams.

               But the current baseball World Series, matching the Braves of Atlanta, Georgia, against the Astros of Houston, Texas, provides an exception. I’m for the Braves and against the Astros. The reason should be obvious to any sports-page reader. Between late-season 2016 and mid-season 2018, the Astros perpetrated one the biggest frauds in the history of any sport by stealing opponents’ pitch signs and relaying the results to their hitters.   

               Yes, sign-stealing is a baseball tradition, and all teams do it or try to, but this was no canny coach’s trick but an organized, team-managed project with electronic help, a TV camera in the team’s home-park centerfield stands. It was cheating on a grand scale and it worked, contributing to the team’s 2017 World Series victory. It was discovered only after a player the team traded away clued in his new teammates to the scheme. How it figured this wouldn’t happen boggles the mind.

               Once exposed, the Astros pleaded guilty, or pretty much so. They were fined $5 million and docked some draft picks. Three men (general manager Jeff Luhnow, field manager A.J. Hinch and his bench coach, Alex Cora) first were suspended and then fired. It is testimony to the seriousness with which capital “B” Baseball took those actions that Hinch and Cora got other managerial jobs as soon as they became available, Hinch with the Detroit Tigers and Cora with the Boston Braves. In baseball the wages of sin are more wages.

No players were penalized, assertedly because they contributed to the investigation but probably because the owners didn’t want players’ union grief. The other penalties were similarly soft. The Astros should have had their ’17 title revoked and their 2020 (or 2021) season cancelled. I know, that last thing wouldn’t have been good for anybody’s business, but I’m just sayin’.

The playing- field core of the team’s 2016-2018 roster—Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel—are still around, hammering out hits and soaking up money and home-crowd applause. Excellent as they are, their actions should lump them with the steroid-using cheaters when they come up for Hall of Fame consideration.

Among the most-galling parts of the scandal’s aftermath has been the way the press, etc., has come to treat it. Journalists love to portray athletes as battling obstacles, and the booing the ‘Stros receive in foreign parks is viewed as one of those, bravely overcome by the doughty Houstonians. Teesh and double teesh.

NEWS: THE PHOENIX SUNS’ DEANDRE AYTON BREAKS OFF CONTRACT TALKS, CLAIMING LACK OF “RESPECT” FROM THE TEAM

VIEW: BELIEVE THE MAN

Ayton, the first choice in the 2018 National Basketball Association draft and the starting center on the Suns’ league-runnerup unit last season, is a fourth-year player and thus is eligible for a star’s five-year maximum-extension contract, currently worth $172.5 million. He asked for that in talks but the team balked, reportedly offering only three- or four-year pacts. A few others in his draft class, including the Dallas Mavericks’ Luca Doncic and the Atlanta Hawks’ Trae Young, had gotten the max, setting  Ayton’s teeth on edge, as it were.

“I want to be respected, to be honest,” he was quoted as saying. “I want to be respected the way my peers are being respected by their teams.”

His answer was widely haw-hawed, but I don’t think it should have been. Player salaries in our Big Four pro spectator sports have climbed so high as to be abstractions to the young men who get them. Separated from any earthly needs, they have become valuable mainly as status symbols, like a player’s position in a playground choose-up game.

Let us consider where Ayton is coming from. At age 23, with just a year of college (or, at least, college ball) under his belt, the seven-footer from the Bahamas already has received almost $28 million for his NBA labors, and is due to get another $12 million this season. Even after taxes, etc., that’s enough to absolve him and his family from work for several generations. In all likelihood he’ll earn several times that $40 million before he’s done playing, max-extension or no. He’ll be able to buy an island in his home chain when he quits, so a few million dollars more or less is no big deal.

It’s not much different down the pro-jock food chain. The average salary in the NBA is more than $8 million a year, which means many players earn more in a month than their fathers earned in a lifetime. Even the league’s minimum annual salary of almost $600,000 should be enough to give a young man a nice cushion for later endeavors.

 That’s great by me-- as Babe Ruth said (or is said to have said), “nobody who works for somebody else is overpaid.” Respect, though, is another thing. There’s a worldwide shortage of it, with no end in sight.