The Prospectus Hit Lis... (07/11)
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July 11, 2013 Skewed LeftPlanning the Best Baseball Road Trip
Sometime during the second game of a doubleheader in Batavia, N.Y. on a Monday night, you start to realize just how much baseball there is. So when you return home from that game, you look up the fact there were 14,423 games in the majors and the affiliated minor leagues last year, and all of a sudden hitting six games in four days doesn’t sound so impressive. It is something that every baseball fan with the necessary mobility should try once, though. And then after you try it once, you’ll start picking your next trip before you even take the ticket stubs out of your pocket. While much has been written on the topic from people with much more exhausted odometers than mine, the advice here might sound a little different. It starts with asking a lot of questions. There is no better learning experience than a baseball road trip if you ask the right people the right questions. Talk to scouts before or after games, and find out what their life on the road is like. Talk to stadium employees on a night when there is an announced crowd of 908. Read the history of a town of 15,000 during a pitching change and gain an appreciation for where you’re just passing through. If what I learned from six games in four days sounds like a scrambled stream of consciousness, it’s because it’s supposed to be. You have a lot of thoughts on the road. The fact that you’re with two of your best friends for most of the trip increases the number of thoughts way more than threefold. 1. The trip This actually was not my most impressive trip. That one was five games in four days, but it was five ballparks and required attending an 11 a.m. game and a 6:30 p.m. game in the same day, four hours of driving apart. We just made it. But it was an easy trip as an Upstater, and one that was complete with side trips to Cooperstown, the Finger Lakes, and Canada along the way. 2. The best player I saw The best player I saw, despite seeing the Appel debut, was Xander Bogaerts. It was my first live experience with the no. 3 prospect on Jason Parks’ midseason top 50. He hit the ball sharply to all fields; even his flyout was a bullet. And the climax was a three-run home run over the left field bullpen and off the scoreboard in Rochester (video here). He was a bit laughable in the field—not the kind of stuff that has you thinking he’s not agile enough to be a shortstop, just a throw he should have eaten and a popup that he lost on a cloudy day. But I’ll remember that bat. 3. Find something weird outside the lines This trip featured an even more obscure place. In Buffalo, in the shadow of the Peace Bridge to Fort Erie, Ontario sits a small monument in an otherwise mostly quiet marina. The plaque commemorates the Fenian Invasion, a little-known piece of American history, Canadian history, British history and Irish history that can be summarized fairly briefly. After the Civil War, a few hundred Irish men who had fought in the war got together and straight-up invaded Canada. They succeeded in making a few captures in the name of “encouraging” the British to surrender their control of Ireland. The raids were squashed in short order thanks to some U.S.-British diplomacy, but just months after the first one, Britain ceded control over Canada (1867), with part of what is now celebrated as Canada Day being the crown’s disinterest in defending such a large piece of land. Here is the monument, five miles from the home of the Buffalo Bisons.
4. The second-best player I saw Okay, he probably won’t end up being the second-best player we saw. Suggs was drafted with the last pick of the second round last month, no. 73 overall, as a college reliever out of the University of Arkansas. That’s usually a predictor of a fast rise, and the stuff was way too good for the New York Penn-League. Despite the NYPL being generally the worst offensive environment in baseball—the pitchers are ahead of the hitters, who are using wood bats for the first time—it’s not an extreme strikeout league and is actually mild (7.6 per 9) compared to say the offense-happy Cal League’s 8.4 per 9. But Suggs had some exception swing-and-miss stuff and good velocity. Given the state of Miami’s club, expect him in the majors before you finish reading the next section. 5. Tim Hortons doesn’t have an apostrophe. 6. The most unusual player I saw It’s impossible to deny that part of what made him stand out, in addition to the body, is how unusual it is to see a catcher from the Far East in the U.S. professional ranks. Pitcher: sure. Outfielder: rarer, but sure. There have actually been only two catchers ever from Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, which ranks pretty low on the list of all 81 modern era players from those countries listed by their primary position.
Source: Baseball-Reference.com Play Index One of them was Keith McDonald, who was born in Japan but played college ball at Pepperdine and was drafted. The other: Japanese-born Kenji Johjima, who spent his early-30s seasons with the Mariners from 2006-09. 7. What level should you see Triple-A is well documented as a waiting room for the majors without many exciting prospects, and the short-season leagues just have some poorer baseball and too many guys who will wash out. Your mileage may vary, but I’d rank the levels in terms of watchability: 1. Double-A If I were drawing a minor league road trip from scratch without placing much importance on starting point, I’d try to focus it around as many A and Double-A games as possible. 8. So where should you go? Florida has the most teams at 14, plus all the GCL teams, and California is second with 12, but you’re essentially getting all high-A games in one league and not always the greatest variety of cities. Montana, believe it or not, has the most teams per capita with four Pioneer League teams and only a million people, but it’s a huge state and not a great level. Maryland leads all multi-team states in density of those teams per unit of land area, with five minor league teams in a state 1/16 the size of California. I’d probably start there. You’re on the southern frontier of the Double-A Eastern League and the New York-Penn, and if you go south, you’re right in the heart of the low-A South Atlantic League and especially the high A Carolina League. If Triple-A is your thing for name recognition, you have Norfolk, Durham, and Charlotte, and don’t forget the O’s and Nats if you want to throw the real thing in there. Pennsylvania is an excellent choice, too, with two major league teams and eight minor league teams, many of which play in brand-new facilities. Here’s a great map from MILB.com that might help you out. No matter which area you choose, do it with open ears—as you can see, just this four-day trip produced a wide array of scrambled thoughts. And do so with a good eye for things beyond the outfield wall and, most importantly, plenty of sunscreen.
Zachary Levine is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @zacharylevine
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Free Agent Watch: Week 15
Bogaerts has game power and his body looks 75% matured. I've seen him play in Portland 3 or 4x and once v Hicks now w/the Twins and afte the game I tweeted if Hicks is a top prospect, then Bogaerts is an All-Sar. I wasn't saying Hicks looks bad, but in a 1-2 count, Bogaets showed a defensive approach and swing to a low outside FB and sent it off the CF wall, over Hicks head. After that swing and seeing the ball explode off the bat when he was obviously just barreling the ball for ct, I knew he had some major leaps comin on the top 100. His defense on the other hand was pretty shotty, but that's over a year ago. He literally had his feet tangled on a warm-up ball from the 1B.