Welcome to the new and improved Baseball America. 

It’s prettier.

It’s faster.

It’s better on your phone.

We now have a lot better ways to highlight the content you want to read that in the past often got buried somewhere on page five of a subpage.

Hey, we now have a working search function. If you’ve had trouble finding stories you want to read in the search engine on our site in the past, we completely understand. We’ve had the same issues. Thankfully that’s much improved.

But we also ask you to pardon our dust. If you’ve ever moved, you know the frustration and stress that comes anytime you load up a truck and pack everything into boxes.

You may be moving into a nicer house or apartment. It’s going to be great in the long-term, but the process of actually moving is something no one enjoys. We’re in the midst of that move.

So thank you for coming to our new home, and we’re glad you’ve come to look around. But we do also ask for your patience as we work through our punch list of final items that aren’t perfect yet. We’re working as fast and as hard as we can to resolve those issues.

Before long, we expect there will be nothing about the old site that is better than what we’re offering here. But we have run into a few hurdles we’re trying to clear up.

1. Customer login issues.

As part of our new Website, we also migrated to new customer service software. It seems to be working well for most, but we are working through some migration issues. If you are a subscriber who is having any problems logging into the site, please contact us at customerservice@baseballamerica.com. We cleared many of those issues today, we hope to have any remaining issues cleared up in the very near future. Feel free to also reach out directly to me, JJ Cooper, at jjcooper (at) baseballamerica.com if you need additional assistance.

2. Statistics

Stats are briefly unavailable as we roll out the new Website. We plan to have them back as quickly as we can, and we can promise our statistical offerings will be much improved before long. We were quite frustrated with the paucity of our stat offerings, and we are going to improve that as well as make them more in depth and easier to use for everyone. We apologize for this untimely delay and are working to get them back on the site in the near future.

3. Other Issues

If you have any other questions, we want to help. Again, you can email customerservice@baseballamerica.com or myself, JJ Cooper, at jjcooper (at) baseballamerica.com. We want to know what you think, what you like about the site, what you can’t find and what you think we should improve.

If you have any questions, we want to answer them. But our promise is that this is going to be the best BaseballAmerica.com we’ve ever had. It’s not just a fresh coat of paint. We now have the framing to add on features we couldn’t do before.

We’re excited to keep rolling out new features week after week as we keep improving the new site. The best is ahead of us.

Thank you for being a Baseball American.

JJ Cooper

Editor-In-Chief
Baseball America

The post Welcome To Our New Home appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

Our daily lives, relationships and the keys to surviving this crazy world would all benefit from being and acting more mindful. For clarity, let’s define mindfulness. Google mindfulness and its core components and plan on spending the day sifting through the myriad of definitions and elements. For the purpose of this article, I’ll do the leg work and share two popular working models for mindfulness.

Ellis Edmunds, Psy.D. defines the SOAP model of mindfulness:

Separation from Thought. Most thoughts have little truth to them and are often not very helpful.
Observing Yourself. We step into a space of just observing ourselves.
Acceptance of Emotions. You are telling your emotions: “I see you and accept you just the way you are.”
Present Moment. To bring our attention back to the here and now. 

The University of Minnesota’s Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing defines the big M (mindfulness) as follows:

Intention—to cultivate awareness (and return to it again and again)
Attention—to what is occurring in the present moment (simply observing thoughts, feelings and sensations as they arise)
Attitude—non-judgmental, curious, and kind

To further your mindfulness, breathing, meditation, fitness, yoga, and journaling are all great activities we should do daily. Truly, we all need to find time to work toward the best version of ourselves.

The mindfulness movement does have its critics.

Thomas Joiner, a research psychologist at Florida State University who primarily works in the area of suicide prevention, wrote a book (Mindlessness: The Corruption of Mindfulness in a Culture of Narcissism) critiquing the culture that surrounds mindfulness: meditation, yoga and other similar wellness and well-being concepts that purport to be grounded in spirituality.

Joiner claims that Western practitioners often espouse a shallow, self-absorbed, narcissistic and selfish distortion of mindfulness. In particular, he claims that the focus on self-acceptance and self-love can easily descend into extreme narcissism and self-centeredness. According to Joiner, Eastern practices of mindfulness and meditation also have the potential to lead to narcissism, entitlement and arrogance. However, other parts of the culture and the practice may limit the descent into extreme self-centeredness. Within Buddhist mindfulness, there is a focus on collectivism and service to the group, which may prevent a descent into extreme narcissism.

Joiner does distinguish between authentic and false mindfulness. Authentic mindfulness is non-judgmental moment-to-moment awareness of everything. This includes the external world and other people, as well as your internal world. Authentic mindfulness involves seeing yourself as a small part of a large universe. When you are authentically mindful, you have an awareness of things outside of yourself including other people and the environment. 

The sports performance world and life coaches love to talk about the zone, flow and being present. Neuroscientists have given us insight into the inner workings of the brain and how we can learn and develop more efficient neuronal pathways to perform better. The academic world can debate and define full versus less in peer-review articles and in classrooms but in practical terms, how can we give meaning and guidance to the “Just do it, don’t think” holy grail end game in performance?

Okay. Stay with me now. Performance at the highest level is about to start. How can we go from mindfulness to a state of minimal thought in order to make better movements and decisions at high rates of speed and in limited time?

The master teacher/coach is always looking to add new tools and teaching points. Consider adding mindless teaching when working with the elite, especially as a mindset for high-level competition.

What is Mindless? Is it bad, good, or at times the mindset of the elite performers?

Alexander P. Burgoyne, Ph.D. in cognition and cognitive neuroscience at Michigan State University shares the following:

“Mindlessness is a state of unawareness, of going through the motions without being consciously aware of your surroundings or your inner states. It can be described as on autopilot or responding robotically, without conscious awareness of what you are doing, thinking, or feeling.”

Burgoyne continues:

“Although mindfulness has its merits, psychological research has also revealed that in some circumstances it’s important to be mindless. That is, as we develop skill in complex tasks, we can perform them with increasing facility until attention seems to be unnecessary.

“Underlying this state of ‘automaticity’ (as cognitive psychologists call it) are mental processes that can be executed without paying attention to them. These processes run off without conscious awareness—a chain reaction of mental events. We don’t perform all tasks automatically, but many can be performed this way once they are well practiced.

“Research has also revealed that paying too much attention to what you’re doing can have damaging effects, particularly when you perform well-practiced skills. In fact, this is one reason why some experts appear to ‘choke under pressure’: they think too much about the mechanics of the task at hand.”

Riding a bike, brushing your teeth and driving to work on the same road for years are situations where mindlessness wins the prize. Ask elite performers about their mindset during high-level competition and you will hear less about thought and more about instinct in their post-game interviews.

Mushin: A Zen expression that means mind without mind. It is defined as a mind not fixed or occupied by thought or emotion and thus open to everything. Simply, both a negative mind and a positive mind are dangerous as they pull us away from the present. We all know that mind wandering and preoccupation with thoughts are not conducive to peak performance.  So why fill players’ heads with tricks and “tools” that may hinder their ability to be mindless?

Zen Master Takuan Soho would make a great hitting coach with this insight:

“When the swordsman (hitter) stands against the opponent, he is not to think of the opponent, nor of himself, nor his enemy’s sword movements. He just stands there with his sword which, forgetful of all technique, is ready to follow the dictates of the subconscious. When he strikes, it is not the man but the sword in the hand of the man’s subconscious that strikes.”

Mindful, mindless, potato, potatoe.  Are they the same thing?  Maybe not. Perhaps we should be careful in filling up players’ minds with strategies, self-help cues and well-intended positive noise to improve their ability to be thoughtless in competition.

Perhaps, mindful is a stepping stone to mindless. We need to be mindful of our own innate strength and be mindless of the noise, deterrents, belief systems and stigmas attaches to the ”how, who and what.” In essence, the mindset of being mindless is to surrender to your instinctual prowess.

So, if the mindset for elite performance is more mindless, how can players achieve this?

How about a new mindset to consider in improving performance? It’s tough to overthink and easier to go mindless if you surrender to the present landscape around you. Isn’t the present really the space and time that exists outside the athlete’s world as they prepare to wield the sword?

 What if Eyeful was part of the mindless model? I would describe Eyeful as follows:

• As much as one can or wants to see.
• An awareness and choice to remain curious about the external environment.
• A non-judgmental connection to the outside world.
• A desire to have one’s visual system as primary sense.
• Effortless seeing with a diffused level of attention on the object and the surrounding space.

Every coach and player wants new drills and new cues. On recent visits to teams and individual players, the following terms helped change mindsets and improved game speed performance:

• Shut up and see. Looking is not seeing.
• Play with your eyes, not your thoughts.
• Less is more. Effortless effort wins the prize, both in mechanics and thought.
• Space is invisible to the eyes, but the brain craves space as comfort food and as a predictor of time.

Be authentically mindful when time permits, go mindless and eyeful during game time.

Tony Abbatine is a Performance Coach for several NCAA baseball programs in the area of vision and mental skills and lectures across the country on the same topic. He has consulted with over 12 MLB teams and hundreds of players over the last decade in the area of visual psychology. 

The post COLUMN: Are Top-Level Athletes Really Mindful? appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

Taking the body and mind off the daily highway of thoughts and into a quiet rest stop is good for all of us.

Finding the time and level of commitment continues to haunt most of us in attempting to change our daily habits, even though doing so could have long-term benefits. 

How great would it be for meditation to be part of your daily practice schedule? Long toss checks that box!

You should ask yourself or your players why they feel so good after long tossing.

There are several reasons. The body and mind crave open space as an environment to live and play in. There are reasons why we feel less stressed when sitting on a beach, watching a sunset, or paying attention to the space around our bodies.

Alan Jaeger expands on this notion:

“Meditation is about getting into a clear, quiet, instinctive, and expansive state so that the person can feel a deep sense of freedom and naturalness,” he said. “It’s about trusting the ‘non-thinking’ or instinctive part of us. Long toss has a similar mission — by trusting our feel, instincts, and athleticism.”

In any meditation practice, awareness of feelings and freedom from overthinking start the journey.

Most meditation techniques suggest keeping your eyes closed. My advice to players is to start with your eyes open so that the real world becomes the backdrop in which your meditative state lives.  The eyes-open approach also makes for a natural transition into real performance situations.

Jaeger explains how long toss reinforces this approach:

“In Long Toss, you are not trying to be ‘technically perfect’ with every throw,” he states. “Quite the contrary — the emphasis is on feel. As you move away from your throwing partner, and back in toward your throwing partner, your release point (and body movements) changes as you gradually move uphill, and then gradually downhill. This ‘variance’ in your release point (and body) allows the athlete’s highest intelligence to take over because the athlete has tapped into a feeling that is in space — the outside environment. And by incorporating this approach, the athlete’s most natural feel and movements can manifest because he or she is tapping into the no limits of an ‘open space’, rather than the potential limits of a technical or limited space.”

A recent session with a few MLB pitchers reinforced Jaeger’s explanation.

When I look at nothing, I feel everything.

Pitchers see the catcher’s glove but stay away from the over-target fixation focus that plagues many young players. Locking in on the glove works for some, but for others, it cripples in-game command.

Long toss reinforces this mindset as the “feel” becomes the main task.

Jaeger says it best:

“We are again positioning ourselves to trust the higher intelligence of our body to take over,” he says. “Again, this is significantly aided by the concept of throwing the ball with feel, gradually uphill and then gradually downhill in Long Toss.  And because we are trusting our release point and athleticism in space (rather than a technique), we are allowing the benefits of this space to free us up and activate our most inherent movements. In short, in both cases, we are trusting the non-thinking part of us to take over — a sense of open focus versus the potential limitations of narrow focus.”

Long toss ( in whatever distance you believe in) is part of every team and player’s drill package. Meditation should be part of every player’s daily drill menu. Get the best of both worlds by long tossing and staying connected to the space between you and your partner that makes you “feel” good, and that feeling will be there when competition starts.

The post COLUMN: The Ultimate Eyes Open Meditation: Long Toss appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

Here is some advice to all coaches and players: 

• Let the new information digest for a few days before the new concept, cue or drill rocks your world. 
• Don’t be fooled by logos and pretty presentations. Listening to someone on a stage doesn’t make all that they believe and present the gospel. 
• Does the new info align with your core beliefs?  Unless you were way down the wrong rabbit hole on a topic, don’t do a complete reversal with the “new stuff” you just ingested. 
• Question the science. Just because they use fancy words and relied on studies from a “science guy” doesn’t make the content the absolute holy grail. For every scientist that supports a theory, a handful of other scientists can be found to refute the study. Look for peer review, third-party publications and potential conflicts of interest with the “experts” who recommend a product or service. 
• Can you explain it to your most stubborn player? If you can’t explain it in language and cues that players can understand, don’t share it. Take the time to personalize the new stuff so that others can understand it without you showing off with large words and technical language. The master teacher takes the complex and creates words, images and feelings for his students to embrace and own. 

Dr. Dan Laby, MD, from the Sports and Performance Vision Center in New York, agrees: 

“One of the greatest challenges for those of us who research, test, and train baseball performance is translating the science into real-world action and words of explanation. In general, if one can explain a complicated topic in real terms then they truly understand it. The use of big words and complicated terms implies a lack of understanding. Having scientific information is of little use if it can’t be used to improve lives or in this case sports performance. It is truly a skill to be able to convey scientific discoveries to athletes in a way that they are relevant and materially of value.” 

The wisdom of several sources that have helped coaches sift through the “candy store” are worth sharing as, perhaps, a confirmation or questioning of your own teaching toolbox. For ease of reading and length for this article, I have taken the key takeaways from the sources below that I believe can provide insight into why or what teaching tools and cues you may need to tweak. For those that want to dig deeper into the experts below, Google awaits them. 

The work of James (J.J.) Gibson is the gold standard in visual and space perception today. His theories on affordances and environment-centered orientations have been the platform on which the implied-training advocates teach. Gibson’s concept of “ecological optics” attempts to explain how space is invisible to the outside world, but within the brain, it provides valuable information to predict time to collision. 

Gibson’s words are relevant to baseball training protocol: 

“Experiments need to be performed outdoors. The stimuli to be judged ought to be of a natural environment …The light reaching the eye has already been organized into complex structures by its interaction with the environment. 

“People do not live in an abstract space. They live on the surface of the earth. There is no such thing as a perception of space without the perception of a continuous background surface: ground Theory.”

Arizona State sports science researcher Robert Gray spoke recently and echoed the same thoughts Gibson’s findings supported. 

“The starting point for vision is the environment (this ambient optic array) NOT the retinal image. The stimulus is in the environment, not the eye.”

Gray’s work, particularly, in action control, is insightful in developing a training protocol for athletes, especially hitters.

Because the information from the environment is specific, there is no need to generate a prediction. The performer just needs to educate their attention to this information and control the action using an information-movement coupling. Intelligence is not just in the head but in the performer-environment interaction. 

The top swing doctors would agree with Gray’s take on online control: 

“The good variability results suggest that successful batting, does not involve the use of low variability repeatable swings … Instead it suggests that batting involves “repetition without Repetition ( Bernstein) repeating the outcome of barreling the ball up not repeating the same swing.”

Lastly, Gray has been clear in voicing his skepticism on the many brain-training equipment in the industry in which he calls “pseudoscience.” 

Neuro-Skills developer Tim Nicely (V-Flex founder) provides more insight on how to improve training protocols that may better transfer to real world competition. Since we see with our brain, not our eyes, his perspective on training strategies is unique. His view is that perception is predictive and that by manipulating Gibson’s and Gray’s organized external invisible space implicitly he believes the brain can become a better predictor of time relative to the collision with the ball. 

Nicely’s tool, V-Flex, uses the Gestalt laws of organization to develop implicit tools that alter the perception of space and time for hitters and pitchers.   

The laws include: 

1. Closure—tendency for a roughly circular pattern of dots to be seen as belonging to and forming an object.  
2. Common Fate—parts moving together are seen as an object.
3. Contiguity of close-together features and a preference for smooth curves—These laws are commonly used by the (AI) artificial intelligence community. They assist programmers in building computers that recognize patterns and objects.  

On the topics of modern occlusion and pitch recognition programs, Nicely says coaches are at liberty to believe what they want to—he simply views them as lacking basic physics and science foundations.

The reasons why he believes most modern occlusion and pitch recognition programs are lacking are listed below.   

• No adherence to established Principles of light and electromagnetic radiation.     
• Both involve (CLA) constraint-led approaches that use time and view time for constraints. Unfortunately, those aren’t actual constraints because of the method of application. They aren’t constraining the neurons making space/time. They’re essentially just abstract obstacles.  
• Each requires cognition and decision-making. Both consume enormous amounts of time and energy.   Therefore, they violate the Laws of Conservation of Energy.    
• Hitters are learning a skill their brain can’t use in the game because of the specialized nature of the training. Visible pictorial patterns on a TV screen are as far from the real environment as you can get when it comes to actual batting practice. The hitter’s brain is processing raw but well-organized interference patterns within the electromagnetic field during a hitting episode.    
• Faster swing decisions aren’t the answer. Light (electromagnetic waves or visual information) travels 186,000 mps. The speed of thought (cognition) travels 284 mph. Do the math! Cognitive exercise won’t help hitters overcome that undeniable discrepancy in time.     
• Blocking out peripheral distractions … ? There are 300 million more peripheral neurons than central vision neurons. They are the gatherers of pertinent information relative to any task. They are instrumental in the prediction process of perception. It makes no sense to arbitrarily omit interference patterns relative to a pitch in flight. If occlusion multiplied or amplified the interference patterns the hitter’s brain is processing then that would be a good thing, but it doesn’t. People with ADHD might benefit on a cognitive level with less information, but not the normal athlete. The law of physics, space and time are one and the same. You can’t arbitrarily just randomly isolate time. Time and space are pre-coupled. It becomes an omission/redaction of vital information.

A lot of science and interesting theories to ponder. 

The article began with one premise. Stay curious and challenge and embrace the “science.” Knowledge is without power if conveyed to the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong intentions. 

LSU Baseball head coach Jay Johnson on my recent visit with his team summed it up best: 

• “If you fix your eyes, you fix your swing.”
• “It’s either a ball or it’s a line drive.” 

Tony Abbatine is a Performance Coach for several NCAA baseball programs in the area of vision and mental skills and lectures across the country on the same topic. He has consulted with over 12 MLB teams and hundreds of players over the last decade in the area of visual psychology. 

The post COLUMN: Training and Playing in the Real World appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

No big deal, right?

Well, Rivera and Martinez became the fifth and sixth Latin American players to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in the 2010s. Prior to those inductions, there had been just five Latin American big leaguers enshrined in Cooperstown.

While Major League Baseball allowed so-called light-skinned Latin players, primarily from Cuba, long before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, what is often overlooked is the impact of Latin players in the big leagues was minimal until recent years.

Puerto Rican right fielder Roberto Clemente was the first Latin star to be inducted to the Hall of Fame. He was enshrined posthumously in 1973 in a special election after he died in a plane crash the previous New Year’s Eve en route to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.

That was 11 years after Jackie Robinson became the first Black inductee and four years after Roy Campanella was the second Black player elected by the writers.

From 1947 through 1992, there were more Black players in the big leagues than players born in Latin America. And it was not until 1983 that Dominican righthander Juan Marichal became the first Latin American player elected by the BBWAA.

In the next 32 years, however, the only BBWAA-elected players from Latin America were Venezuelan shortstop Luis Aparicio (1984), Panamanian second baseman Rod Carew (1991) and Cuban first baseman Tony Perez (2000). Orlando Cepeda, a first baseman from Puerto Rico, was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1999.

In 1993, however, the Latin big league players outnumbered Black players for the first time since 1950, and the Latin impact has grown each year since.

MLB opened the 2019 season with 227 players from Latin America on rosters or injured lists. The countries represented were the Dominican Republic (102), Venezuela (68), Cuba (19), Puerto Rico (18), Mexico (eight), Curacao (five), Colombia (four), Aruba (one), Nicaragua (one) and Panama (one).

In the last decade, the writers have elected Latin American stars Roberto Alomar (2011), Ivan Rodriguez (2017) and Edgar Martinez from Puerto Rico; Pedro Martinez (2015) and Vladimir Guerrero (2018) from the Dominican Republic and Mariano Rivera (2019) from Panama.

Once Albert Pujols decides to retire, he should plan on making that trip to Cooperstown five years later. It’s hard to think he will fail to be a first-time inductee. The 39-year-old, who was born in the Dominican Republic, finished the 2019 season ranked sixth all-time with 656 home runs to go with 3,202 hits and 2,075 RBIs.

Numerous other active players will require Hall of Fame consideration once they retire. The list includes Venezuelans Miguel Cabrera and Jose Altuve, Dominican Robinson Cano, Puerto Ricans Yadier Molina and Carlos Correa and Cuban Aroldis Chapman.

Other young Latin American stars—Ronald Acuña Jr. and Gleyber Torres from Venezuela and Juan Soto, Rafael Devers and Fernando Tatis Jr. from the Dominican Republic—are just now embarking on what could be long, fruitful careers.

On The Horizon

A summary of Latin American players with high-quality big league careers who will appear on the next five Hall of Fame ballots.

2021

Holdovers from the 2020 ballot include Venezuelan SS Omar Vizquel (52.6 percent in third year of eligibility), Dominican OF Manny Ramirez (28.2 percent, fourth), Dominican OF Sammy Sosa (13.9 percent, eighth) and Venezuelan OF Bobby Abreu (5.5 percent, first).

After crossing the 50 percent threshold, 11-time Gold Glover Vizquel is well positioned to be elected—eventually. Cubs ownership has buried Sosa, hurting his Hall chances.

Top first-time candidates: Dominican 3B Aramis Ramirez and Puerto Rican OF Alex Rios.

2022

Top first-timer: Dominican DH David Ortiz.

It will be interesting to see voters’ reaction to Ortiz, who like Sosa was linked in media reports to performance-enhancing drugs.

2023

Top first-timers: Puerto Rican OF Carlos Beltran, Dominican SS Jhonny Peralta and Venezuelan closer Francisco Rodriguez.

Beltran has the résumé to be a serious candidate, including nine all-star nods, a reputation as a strong teammate and excellence in center fielder. He ranks fourth all time among switch-hitters with 435 home runs, behind only Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle (536), Eddie Murray (504) and Chipper Jones (468).

2024

Top first-timers: Dominican OF Jose Bautista, Dominican 3B Adrian Beltre, Dominican RHP Bartolo Colon and Venezuelan C Victor Martinez.

Beltre collected 3,166 hits, amassed 477 home runs and dazzled on defense, earning five Gold Gloves at third base.

2025

Top first-timers: Cuban 1B Kendrys Morales and Venezuelan 2B Martin Prado.

Both were solid players, but with 14 years in the big leagues it takes breakout seasons to get the voters’ attention.

The post Latin American Stars Who Could Soon Join Growing Group In Cooperstown appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

In a recent discussion with athletes from different sports, it finally dawned on me what the common denominator was for everyone in the room. 

Space. 

Space is the final frontier in all athletes’ visual-processing strategies. Put in another way, great athletes see, measure and process the space between objects on a field faster and more accurately than their opponents. 

Simply, the space in between point A and point B and how players measure and gauge the space explains the first-step quickness on a fly ball, a quarterback hitting a receiver down field, hitters estimating the time it takes to make contact with the ball, soccer or hockey goalies defending the net, golfers sizing up a putt and pitchers hitting the strike zone.

This type of three-dimensional strategy reminds one of open focus i.e. looking at nothing and seeing everything.

To see if you understand the strategy, try the following test below:

• While sitting in your room or outside, look around at all the different objects in your view.
• Blink to reset and then “see” the space in between the objects and the object at the same time. 
• “Space riders,” as we are calling this way of seeing, can be practiced daily. 
• The harder and more one-dimensional we look at objects the less we see, especially once the object starts moving. 

Some drills to practice space riding include:

• Taking batting practice and making the space in between the ball and home plate part of your focus. You want to use that space to calculate the time until collusion. Remember, we hit or catch what we think we see based on all relevant cues ( space being the biggest) we can gather in a small period of time. 
• Having a catch or having someone kick soccer balls at you while estimating when the ball will arrive based on your space measuring skills.  
• Thinking of the invisible road between objects as the ultimate tool to quickly calculate on the fly.
• Allocating parts of team practice to space riding between many objects ( trees, fences, cars). The first player to see the space wins!

Being able to estimate when a moving object will arrive is more a function of how effective players use the process of space riding the “nothing in between.” 

Hitting coaches love talking about changing movement patterns to create more space and time in the swing. Newsflash, if the brain doesn’t effectively process the ” space,” the timing efficiency of the swing never shows up outside the laboratory.

Pitching coaches that want to improve their students’ game-day command should introduce young pitchers to the space between the mound and home plate ( the runway) and the soothing effect it has on target acquisition skills.

Infield coaches preaching first-step quickness and attack angles may see improved fielding efficiency by having a discussion with players on their pre-pitch and ball-flight visual focus levels and seeing how space affects their “go” time.

If you can embrace and measure space, you can be like Spock and the vision kings and queens of the sports world. 

The post Space, The Final Frontier In Sports appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

Two days before Opening Day, however, he was killed, along with former NBA great Kobe Bryant, in a helicopter crash that also took the lives of Altobelli’s wife and daughter, who was a teammate of Bryant’s daughter on a youth basketball team.

The news about the crash focused on the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna “and seven others,” to the point that Rockies scout Walker Monfort was at a game on Sunday when he saw a tweet about Bryant’s death and mentioned the helicopter crash to the scouts seated near him. The scout next to him, who had just received a brief call, nodded his head.

“My dad was one of them,” Red Sox scout JJ Altobelli said.

And John Altobelli was more than “one of seven others.” He may not have been in the limelight, but in his role as a junior college coach he had direct impact on the lives of many young men.

The values Altobelli taught his players were evident.

Orange Coast College officials left it up to the members of the baseball team whether to play the opening game against Southwestern College, and the members of the team left no doubt when they voted to play.

It was “play ball” at Orange Coast College, which won four California state junior college titles under Altobelli.

“The more normal you can keep things, the better,” assistant coach Ron La Ruffa said after the vote was announced. “And I think Alto would want us to play.”

For Altobelli, life wasn’t about him, it was about what he could do to help teenagers grow, not just on a baseball field but in life. Those who knew Altobelli will tell you he certainly wouldn’t want life to be put on hold for even the briefest of times in the wake of his death.

For Altobelli, and other longtime junior college coaches, the job isn’t about money or national television. It is about working far from the mainstream with a focus on not only winning battles on the field but helping players win battles for success in life.

That’s the driving force behind anyone who spends more than two successful decades at the junior college level.

Junior colleges don’t get the five-star recruits, by any stretch.

There’s no longer the January draft nor the June secondary phase, both of which ceased to exist in 1987, when the draft was streamlined into one event. Those phases drew attention to junior college programs and the athletes who might not have been ready for pro ball out of high school but who didn’t want to delay draft eligibility for three years by going to a four-year school.

Don Sneddon knows the drill. He had a winning record in all 32 seasons he coached Santa Ana College before stepping down to manage what was then the Rockies’ high Class A California League affiliate in Modesto. His team had a .700 winning percentage or better in 22 of those 32 seasons. He won 16 conference championships and three state titles.

“I use the term, ‘We get kids with baggage,’” Sneddon said. “It could be they didn’t have the grades, they weren’t quite good enough, they aren’t ready for the four-year challenge or they didn’t make the grade at a four-year school and (they) step back. Our job is to coach them up and get them to that next level.”

Rockies scouting director Bill Schmidt, an Orange County native who briefly coached in junior college, spoke in glowing terms about Altobelli and the success he had in the challenging world of junior college baseball.

“He was a great person who did an impressive job,” Schmidt said. “There’s not a lot of stability at the junior college level. No player is there for more than two years, and a lot are there for just one. Your team changes every year. A lot of times you get a bounce-back kid from a four-year school.

“He won four state titles. Not many junior college coaches get a chance to manage in the Cape Cod League, but he did for three summers.”

Longtime Sacramento City College coach Jerry Weinstein, now a special assistant with the Rockies, did not know Altobelli, but he knew of him.

“The kids you get, most of them are on edge,” Weinstein. “It’s a job where you rake the field every day. You run fundraisers for your program. He was one of the better guys around.”

Altobelli was one of those guys who made the kids who played for him into men, and they left his program better people than they were the day they arrived.

The post Ringolsby: Remembering The Life Of John Altobelli appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

When he was asked to explain his prospective plans for the 49ers in his job interview, Woodard laid out his plan for a data-driven approach. It’s something he’d helped do as an assistant coach at North Carolina as the Tar Heels become one of the most analytically-inclined teams in college baseball.

The Charlotte administration was sold. Woodard was hired. And from his first day, he and his new staff set about to answer the question: how quickly can a mid-major program go from an old school approach to a data-heavy approach?

As is being seen at college programs all around the country, the answer is very quickly. Analytics have gone from being barely seen in college baseball to being pervasive in just a few years. What was cutting edge in 2016 is normal now. And programs around the country have gotten up to speed very quickly. Even a coach like Woodard, who has made his name in part by being at the front-end of the college analytics revolution, has a lot of work to do to get up to speed with a new program in 2020.

“I think there was a time maybe five years ago where you could have a coaching staff that had more information or smarter information and you could play a certain way or pitch a certain way to where you would have a significant edge,” Woodard said. “Now there are so many good coaches out there that have so much information. There’s so many companies who are slicing and dicing the data a thousand different ways.

“This is moving really fast. I feel like five years ago if you were shifting you could improve your defensive efficiency against teams that were not necessarily at that level yet. In 2017,  I think our shift stood out. In 2018, they stood out way less and then by last year it was like you’re not really gaining much of an edge because it was so common.”

Shifts are now normal. Most college teams have detailed scouting reports on their opponents. And tech that was unknown just a few years ago is now commonplace.

Walk into the 49ers indoor facility and Driveline Baseball plyo-balls (durable balls in a variety of weights both heavier and lighter than normal baseballs), Jaeger tubing and Axe bats for underload and overload training are all readily apparent. There are Rapsodo systems for the hitters and pitchers, allowing them to see data from their pitches or swings on mobile TVs set up next to the cages.

The 49ers new BATS video system (which syncs together video from multiple cameras positioned around the stadium) is scheduled to be ready for Opening Day. A pair of high speed cameras (one to sync with the Rapsodo system for hitters and pitchers training and one to take on the road for recruiting) is also on their way.

The P3 Sports Science team was on site the weekend before Opening Day to do individual assessments of each player on the team. They team is at Charlotte every couple of months, seeing how each player is progressing and then tweaking the individualized training programs. Similarly, Blast bat sensors help the Charlotte coaches to tailor swing programs to improve bat speed, strength or control, depending on what each player needs.

The administration approved a significant amount of funding to allow Woodard and his staff to add tech, but it was not a blank check. 

So Woodard and his staff prioritized. The idea was to create a foundation in 2020 where the vast majority of money spent would help each player’s ability to train. Measuring in-game performance and the scouting data that can come from that will wait.

Charlotte does not have a Trackman doppler radar, which provides a bounty of in-game information. That will come next year. While North Carolina had a flock of students providing the manpower for an analytics team when Woodard was there, Charlotte will be looking to fill out its analytics team more next year. The 49ers are getting a lot of analytical support from Dr. Benny Rodriguez, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering.

So all the tech purchased so far has been acquired with the primary focus of helping the 2020 team perform better.

“The training area is the one where you set and build the foundation there. That’s got to be step one,” Woodard said. “We want to do everything in our power from the player development side so every player that shows up here on campus, whatever their ceiling is we are helping them get there as fast as possible.

“For us we we’re trying to prioritize training because we think that training comes before playing so you know. If we’re not if we’re not tracking and measuring and improving how our guys are training I think we’re skipping a very important step to performance.”

For a new staff, maximizing the potential of the current roster has a variety of benefits. It’s focused on the players who are there—with a few exceptions, the ingredients of a new coaching staff’s first team are set before they ever arrive. So getting the returning players to new levels of performance is key to a successful first year.

It’s also useful for future recruiting. Having examples of players making significant improvements because of a team’s individualized training programs helps attract future players.

After an offseason of training, the 49ers have collected a lot of data. But with a new season beginning, a more important data point will start to be logged.

“Whatever our win-loss record is this year, that tells us just how much further do we have to go?” Woodard said.

The post Even Tech-Savvy College Coaches Have To Work Hard To Keep Up appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

Regardless of whether the best postseason format is the past or present one, it certainly is not this future one.

MLB should be working hard to be less like the NHL and NBA when it comes to the postseason, not more. Those are the leagues that feature roughly half of all teams making the playoffs, and we know what happens.

Teams with losing records get in. No one remembers what happens in the first round. The regular season is irrelevant. Making the playoffs becomes a meaningless accomplishment.

One of baseball’s most valuable assets is its playoff teams have proved undeniably worthy. After 162 games, the teams who make it have earned it.

Adopt this proposal and MLB throws that all away. Devalue the 162-game regular season to the point that even teams who barely finish above .500—as the seventh-best teams in each league, the Red Sox (84-78) and D-backs (85-77) did last year—can call themselves playoff teams, and making the playoffs becomes little more than a participation trophy. In 2017, there would have been a three-way tie for the sixth-best record in the American League—all three teams (the Angels, Royals and Rays) finished at 80-82.

All that in the name of satisfying broadcast partners, who, by the way, are already paying MLB more than a combined $1 billion per year and are zero threat to suddenly just stop carrying MLB games. MLB doesn’t need radical changes to survive in the modern media landscape.

Baseball is already dealing with a number of long-term problems, from the increasing length of game times to declining attendance to a sign-stealing scandal that has created a crisis in credibility.

Embracing mediocrity to generate superficial excitement is not a fix to MLB’s problems. It would just create new ones.

The post Glaser: MLB’s Playoff Proposal Won’t Fix Its Problems appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.

. . . Wait, I have an editor on the line.

Fine, since Baseball America won’t just give me 15 pages, I’ll lower my sights. Here are 20 players who will help set the course of the 2020 season.

Andrew Benintendi, Red Sox. One reason the Red Sox entertained the idea of trading Mookie Betts is the presence of Benintendi, like Betts a complete player. The sweet swinger lost ground in 2019, however, dropping to career-worsts in average (.266), on-base percentage (.343), homers (13) and stolen bases (10). With or without Betts, Benintendi’s return to stardom is essential to the Red Sox competing with the Yankees in the American League East.

Edwin Diaz, Mets. Diaz went from the No. 2 reliever in baseball with the Mariners in 2018 to a dinger machine with the Mets. His ERA nearly tripled as he allowed 15 homers in 58 innings, and he lost the closer role in August. The Mets lost 24 games in which Diaz appeared, an insane number for a closer. The Mets hope to catch the Braves and Nationals this year, and they can’t do it if Diaz is blowing one-fifth of his save opportunities.

The post The 20 Most Interesting MLB Players In 2020 appeared first on College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects - Baseball America.