• The KillerFrogs

247 Sports: Texas A&M ends day with by adding TCU baseball signee

Retired Frog

Active Member
Not accurate at all. There are dozens of very good MLB pitchers with generic spin rates. The best college pitcher in this year’s draft (Jack Leiter) has extremely vanilla spin rate data. Ditto for 2018 1/1 pick Casey Mize. Spin rate when combined with velocity and things like vertical approach angle, vertical movement, spin axis, release height, extension, etc…. Can be a key separator between being good and being great but lack of it doesn’t prevent someone from being good. It’s FAR less important than velocity.
Never knew you had to have a Mechanical engineering degree to scout for MLB
 

Eight

Member
Never knew you had to have a Mechanical engineering degree to scout for MLB

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Moose Stuff

Active Member

That was a great movie overall but the book and the big screen didn’t treat any of those scouts fairly. I know several of them and they were portrayed as absolute boobs which was criminal. I mean for scheiss’s sake they referred to a guy who found/fought for/signed Tim Hudson when most of the industry wasn’t excited about him as the “fat scout”. Come on man.
 

Eight

Member
That dude on the left has me in 15-20 years written all over it.

htu54pv6r5c11.jpg


better him than the guy on the far right

in regards to how the scouts were treated in the movie all i have to go on is what i read in the book, but agree that hollywood took certain liberties be it showing how antiquated the scouts thinking was even though they had somehow found the talent on the team the year before, art howe's refusal to go with beane, and trust your thoughts on the process and that group of scouts.​
 

Moose Stuff

Active Member
htu54pv6r5c11.jpg


better him than the guy on the far right

in regards to how the scouts were treated in the movie all i have to go on is what i read in the book, but agree that hollywood took certain liberties be it showing how antiquated the scouts thinking was even though they had somehow found the talent on the team the year before, art howe's refusal to go with beane, and trust your thoughts on the process and that group of scouts.​

Billy Beane was/is a genius and far ahead of his time. The unfairness of the portrayal of those guys lies in the fact that 99.99999 % of baseball was reacting to it the same way they did. Hell, Billy didn’t even know it was gonna work. Kudos to him for having the balls anyway. He had no chance to win otherwise so perhaps it wasn’t that difficult of a decision for him .

The other thing I’ll add is that the reason those teams ware good was guys like Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Eric Chavez, Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada….. and the glue that held it all together…. STEROIDS. All of those guys were acquired using traditional scouting methods by the way. Those scouts were good at what they did. The guys Oakland took with the “Moneyball” driven picks highlighted in that book (and mostly ignored for good reasons by the movie) we’re almost all failures in the grand scheme.

You really have to separate how well his thinking worked (and continues to work) in putting a big league team together on a cheap budget and how poorly it worked in drafting amateur players. They ditched/retooled that draft philosophy shortly thereafter.
 
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Frog-in-law1995

Active Member
Billy Beane was/is a genius and far ahead of his time. The unfairness of the portrayal of those guys lies in the fact that 99.99999 % of baseball was reacting to it the same way they did. Hell, Billy didn’t even know it was gonna work. Kudos to him for having the balls anyway. He had no chance to win otherwise so perhaps it wasn’t that difficult of a decision for him .

The other thing I’ll add is that the reason those teams ware good was guys like Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Barry Zito, Eric Chavez, Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada….. and the glue that held it all together…. STEROIDS. All of those guys were acquired using traditional scouting methods by the way. Those scouts were good at what they did. The guys Oakland took with the “Moneyball” driven picks highlighted in that book (and mostly ignored for good reasons by the movie) we’re almost all failures in the grand scheme.

You really have to separate how well his thinking worked (and continues to work) in putting a big league team together on a cheap budget and how poorly it worked in drafting amateur players. They ditched/retooled that draft philosophy shortly thereafter.

Didn't realize they applied that thinking to drafting as well. Doesn’t make any sense. Draft kids are cheap regardless.
 

Froglaw

Full Member
Get ready. Schloss the slime will go after all of our commits. I suspect he has been planning this for months before the season ended.

I'll take our chances.

Our facilities keep improving for all sports including Lupton.

Fort Worth is better than just about any College town.

And our cheerleaders don't wear outfits that come from the guys that designed the prison jumpsuits for Cool Hand Luke.
 

Paint It Purple

Active Member
I think he’s saying that this kid’s 90-mph fastball is among the fastest 90-mph fastballs in the country.
Can't count all the dads of 15-16 years that tell me that their kid has hit 90 on the gun.

BTW: I looked up a recent TCU fastballer to see how he's doing. It's not easy no matter how hard you can throw. Dubin Feltman: 92-96 mph. Topped out at 99 mph in college. Sat 94-96 mph after signing in 2018, but velo was down in 2019, often sitting 91-93 and only occasionally touching 96. Reportedly was still sitting in the low-90s in spring training 2020, but velocity started to creep back up at the Fall Instructional League to 92-95, touching 96. At its best, the pitch explodes out of his hand and has late life, making it tough to square up. Club had him work on locating the pitch up in the zone early in 2019 after he had focused on locating it down in the zone in college and in 2018 pro debut. After struggling through the adjustment, particularly with his command and needing to sacrifice velocity to locate the pitch, he returned to locating it lower in the zone near the end of the season, with improved results. Command still needs improvement and is inconsistent from outing to outing. Potential plus offering.
 

Moose Stuff

Active Member
Can't count all the dads of 15-16 years that tell me that their kid has hit 90 on the gun.

BTW: I looked up a recent TCU fastballer to see how he's doing. It's not easy no matter how hard you can throw. Dubin Feltman: 92-96 mph. Topped out at 99 mph in college. Sat 94-96 mph after signing in 2018, but velo was down in 2019, often sitting 91-93 and only occasionally touching 96. Reportedly was still sitting in the low-90s in spring training 2020, but velocity started to creep back up at the Fall Instructional League to 92-95, touching 96. At its best, the pitch explodes out of his hand and has late life, making it tough to square up. Club had him work on locating the pitch up in the zone early in 2019 after he had focused on locating it down in the zone in college and in 2018 pro debut. After struggling through the adjustment, particularly with his command and needing to sacrifice velocity to locate the pitch, he returned to locating it lower in the zone near the end of the season, with improved results. Command still needs improvement and is inconsistent from outing to outing. Potential plus offering.

Vast majority of those dads are lying their ass off.
 

TXTXFrog

Active Member
Not accurate at all. There are dozens of very good MLB pitchers with generic spin rates. The best college pitcher in this year’s draft (Jack Leiter) has extremely vanilla spin rate data. Ditto for 2018 1/1 pick Casey Mize. Spin rate when combined with velocity and things like vertical approach angle, vertical movement, spin axis, release height, extension, etc…. Can be a key separator between being good and being great but lack of it doesn’t prevent someone from being good. It’s FAR less important than velocity.
And none of it really matters if you can't locate it for strikes.
 

Eight

Member
Vast majority of those dads are lying their ass off.

standing joke among friends who coach is you can tell a parent their child is dumb, spawn of satan, another steel and they laugh and agree with you

tell you their kid is slow, can't throw, shoot, etc....and get ready for a fight
 
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