The Ball did WHAT!!!

MLB Photos via Getty Images
Home-plate umpire Tom Hallion maneuvers to get a good view of Stephen Strasburg during his June 8 debut.

A great article from of all places the Wall Street Journal, on the difficulties umpires face dealing with the Stephen Strasburg phenomena.

Judging by the picture shown above, he is equally difficult for batters to deal with.

That pitch is sending the initial, visual stimuli to the batter, "THAT 100 MPH FASTBALL IS COMING RIGHT AT YOUR HEAD, GET OUT OF HERE!!!" Then it turns out to be a knee-buckling curve ball. And the poor batter has only about 0.40 seconds to determine the pitch and it's inevitable destination, all the while suppressing the survival instinct. Even then he has to deliver the bat to the anticipated destination at the right time, in the right place in order to make solid contact.

Talk about an unenviable task....for the batter and the umpire. It's just a lot of fun for fans to watch quality major league hitters turn to jelly-legged blobs of putty in Strasburg's hand.

I think the comparison to Dwight Gooden and others are going to turn out to be valid. This kid really seems to have the goods.

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How to Call What You Can't See
By DAVID BIDERMAN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704198004575310961357883580.html?mod=WSJ_hp_editorsPicks_4

Since his debut with the Washington Nationals, Stephen Strasburg has displayed the kind of pitching repertoire that makes baseball historians scramble for their notebooks.

His four devastating pitches (fastball, chanegup, curveball and sinker) have such extreme break that it's nearly impossible to predict where they will cross the plate. He has already struck out 22 batters in just over 12 innings.


MLB Photos via Getty Images
Home-plate umpire Tom Hallion maneuvers to get a good view of Stephen Strasburg during his June 8 debut.

But here's what separates Mr. Strasburg from the vast majority of precocious arms: He's so good he makes the umpires miss.

Thanks to a system called Pitch f/x, which uses digital cameras to track the trajectory of every pitch in major-league ballparks, it's now possible to measure whether a pitch was a strike or a ball and, more to the point, whether the home-plate umpire made the correct call.

According to a consensus of umpires, a good umpire will make one bad call on a pitch every two innings—or about four or five per game. But in Mr. Strasburg's first start, on June 8, Pitch f/x indicated that the home-plate umpire, Tom Hallion, missed seven calls in only seven innings. By contrast, Mr. Hallion only missed two calls in five-plus innings for the opposing pitcher, Pittsburgh's Jeff Karstens.

In Mr. Strasburg's second start, the system said home-plate umpire Brian O'Nora missed six calls in fewer than six innings. Mr. Hallion and Mr. O'Nora couldn't be reached for comment.

"I've known guys who couldn't sleep the night before they had to ump a pitcher like that," said Don Denkinger, a major-league umpire for almost three decades.

Former all-star pitcher Rob Dibble, a Nationals broadcaster for MASN, said he watched almost every one of Mr. Strasburg's starts in spring training and said he was fooled repeatedly—Mr. Strasburg's pitches moved so much that it was impossible to get a good feel for them. When Mr. Strasburg threw a curve in the first inning of his first major-league game, Mr. Dibble thought it was a strike even though the umpire called it a ball. "I knew these umpires would not call these early breaking balls because they've never seen them this good," he said over the air.

Mr. Dibble said it's not unusual for umpires to need adjustment periods with new starters because they're not used to how they pitch, but that a pitcher as unique as Mr. Strasburg demands a longer timetable. "He demands a huge learning curve," he said.

The problem dates to Mr. Strasburg's college days, before he was picked No. 1 overall by the Nationals. In November 2008, before Mr. Strasburg's final season at San Diego State, Jim Paronto, the coordinator of baseball officials for the Mountain West Conference, said he always made sure any umpire working one of the kid's games was a good balls-and-strikes guy. "He's a special kind of challenge," he said.

When watching Mr. Strasburg pitch, Mr. Paronto said, the first thing that would go through an umpire's mind is, "Wow, did the ball really just do what I think it did?"

Mr. Strasburg isn't the first phenom who has had this problem. Former umpires and managers say baseball immortals like Jack Morris and Dwight Gooden got similar treatment during their careers because their pitches moved too much.

Former New York Mets manager Davey Johnson managed Mr. Gooden for seven seasons, including his rookie and sophomore years, when he struck out 544 batters and won 41 games. Mr. Johnson said Mr. Gooden had robot-like control of his pitches, but umpires were often overwhelmed by their movement.

To make things more difficult, Mr. Gooden would turn his body during his windup in a way that made it harder for umpires to see the ball as it left his hand. "No question about it—umpires can struggle seeing pitches," Mr. Johnson said. "They're human like the rest of us."

Early in his career, Jeremy Bonderman of the Detroit Tigers was dogged by inconsistency. He'd pitch well one day, terrible the next, mixing horrible pitches with great ones. His coach at the time, Bob Cluck, said he thinks part of the pitcher's problem was that umpires weren't familiar with the immense amount of movement on his breaking pitches—so they would call them balls when they'd actually landed in the strike zone.

Mr. Cluck said the sharp lateral movement on Mr. Strasburg's pitches will probably make them similarly difficult to grade. "Those are the toughest pitches to call," he said.

Former umpire Dave Phillips, a 31-year major-league veteran, said Mr. Strasburg is a walk in the park compared to another wildly talented pitcher: Hall-of-Famer Nolan Ryan. For all his greatness, Mr. Ryan was known for his lack of control, famously holding the records for most strike outs of any major leaguer and the most walks.

This made him especially tough to ump, Mr. Phillips said, because his pitches often ended up streaking far outside the strike zone. When they saw Mr. Ryan was pitching on a given day, Mr. Phillips said the reaction was universal: "Oh, God."

Steve Palermo, a major-league umpire supervisor who called balls and strikes for 14 years, compared Mr. Strasburg's pitches to former greats like Bert Blyleven and Mr. Ryan. "Some of the veteran umpires have seen it before, but you have to know it's going to be different than normal" he said.

The key to working with a pitcher with so much talent, Mr. Palermo said, is to force yourself to wait an extra second to make a call. A home-plate umpire's cardinal sin, he says, is to make a judgment too early, then watch helplessly as the ball jumps in a different direction at the last moment.

Cuban pitcher Aroldis Chapman signs with Reds for $30M

Well off from my hysterical and hyperbolic $75M estimate.

It helped that the Yankees and Red Sox seemed disinterested or otherwise content with their pitching.

Six years, $30 million is still not bad at $5M per.

By contrast, Dice-K got $52M over 6 years for ~8.7 per year.
Stephen Strasburg's deal was for $15M over 4 years or ~$3.8M per year.

Almost, but not quite in between the two deals which I suppose in hindsight makes some sense.

Dice-K was an estabhlised, veteran with a solid track record.
Strasburg is somewhat less of a proven commodity, however, the draft limited his negotiating options.

Fix the draft??...That's right, fix this...

I SET THE OVER-UNDER ON THIS GUYS CONTRACT AT $75 MILLION - NO DICE-K LIKE BUYOUT FEE TO CASTRO REQUIRED

Now this is MY pet-peeve about the draft. These guys want to further strangle the negotiating ability of American kids, so they can allow more funds to flow to the bottom line AND have more money for SPECIAL situations like this.

NOW, we shall see what the recently demonized Stephen Strasburg was ACTUALLY worth.

This kid here is 21 years old, and a LEFTY with a 102 MPH fastball. The lefty-ness may even make him MORE valuable in an open market situation than Strasburg.

HOLY COW!! These huckleberry owners won't be able to keep their checkbooks in their pants long once they get close to this guy and his agent. (It's got to be Boras).

We will see if my $75 million, back of the envelope calculation rings true here.

I officially declare him comparable to Strasburg. What he gets, Strasburg would have received, give or take a few perks to be named later.

What really roils me is I don't see how players in this situation are not required to be subject to the next player draft. The headline says he is "petitioning" MLB to be a free-agent. I'm not asking them to say NO. But why can't they say, "Sure, you can play here. Your fastball is welcome here, but you are subject to the same rules as other youngsters your age, we'll see you at the next years draft, televised by ESPN." Would the current major league players or the union object? What other constituency would stand up and represent for these guys? The World Future Baseball Players Defector Society?

I don't want to hear from these idiot owners or any of their weeny-whiny media mouthpieces about what needs to be fixed in baseball until they fix the most obvious problem, which is the payroll disparity and it's correlation to teams ability to compete and make the playoffs from year to year. I mean if anything calls for the phrase "level playing field" these two issues certainly do.

SHARE REVENUES BETTER OR IMPLEMENT A SALARY CAP TO EQUALIZE THE CURRENT PAYROLL DISPARITY!!
and
EQUAL TREATMENT OF PLAYERS REGARDLESS OF COUNTRY OF ORIGIN!!
FIX THAT MLB AND MLBPA!!!!

FROM ESPN:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4491904

Aroldis Chapman, the Cuban defector considered to be one of the top pitching prospects in the world, petitioned Major League Baseball for free-agency status recently and is likely only weeks from becoming a free agent, according to his agent.

Early Monday, Chapman's representatives announced that the left-hander has established residency in Andorra, a tiny country of about 84,000 that borders Spain and France.

By establishing residency outside the United States, the 21-year-old Chapman avoids being subject to baseball's amateur draft. MLB must study his residency and legal paperwork before declaring him a free agent.

"We chose Andorra because of its tranquility, its tax benefits for Aroldis, and also being a commercial mecca of sorts, particularly for its size," Edwin Mejia, Chapman's agent, wrote in an e-mail. "We felt that it could translate to unique marketing opportunities for Aroldis in Europe.

"Andorra is a winter playground for the wealthy and powerful residents of Europe, of which, God willing, Aroldis will be as well. Given all our options it became the perfect choice. He even has health insurance, life insurance, and a pension all before he even signs his first major league contract. We are very proud of this."

( The Slav - won't this guy fit right in, he sounds like a Hall of Fame prima dona already. )

The New York Yankees have already shown interest in the lefty, whose fastball was clocked at 102 miles per hour at the World Baseball Classic this year. It's also expected that teams such as the Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers will at least show initial interest in Chapman.

( The Slav - what no Pirates, no Royals, no Padres? Don't they need pitching?)

Is Strasburg worth $75 million?

Not if you listen to the chattering nabobs parroting the party line about how "the draft needs to be restructured"--"it's not working right"--"it's insane that a guy who hasn't thrown a pitch in the bigs makes this much money", etc., etc.

But in a free, open market I don't see why Strasburg wouldn't command over $50 million. Would major league teams be better off without a draft? Or do they just want one that suppresses bonuses below their intelligence level? They hold the checkbooks and the budgets. For the life of me, I don't understand why otherwise intelligent businessmen feel the need to have the heavy hand of regulations save them from themselves. But, if they can get away with it, more power to them, I guess.

Take the Dice-K example of a premier talent made available to all 30 teams to see what could happen in a Strasburg Open Market.

The Red Sox won the bidding by paying approximately $50 million to the Japanese team that owned his "rights". Granted, not all of that "rights fee" money would flow directly to the player in an open, unfettered market.

But would perhaps half of that amount be included in an open market bidding war? I don't see why not. Granted, Dice-K was a relatively proven commodity. He had pitched against major leaguers and came away with glowing reviews.

Strasburg will eventually generate similar reviews, and then some, if his power fastball and quality breaking stuff make the same impact in the majors as they did in the college ranks. I know he won't be throwing against UC-Santa Barbara anymore but there is always the Pirates. I'm not sure his K/9IP, WHIP or BAvg against him are going to change much barring injury.

The bottom line is, 102 MPH is 102 MPH. To take the George Young "Planet Theory" and transplant it from football to baseball--there are only so many people on the planet capable of throwing a baseball 102 MPH. It would behoove the Nats to try to acquire as many of such players as they can. If they finish last again, there is no guarantee that a nearly major league ready, potential top of the rotation starter will be available. Although--the next LeBron--Bryce Harper would not be a bad consolation prize.

It would also behoove Mr. Strasburg to sign and not hold out. His star will never be higher. It can't be elevated by pitching against Indy leaguers or the same crop of collegians he just dominated this year. And I don't believe for a second that the Japanese teams are dumb enough to insert themselves in the middle of a negotiation ploy.

I would like to see some changes made to the draft, i.e. ability to trade draft picks (maybe limited to top 5 rounds). I think the inclusion of Cuban and Dominican players in the draft just on the basis of fundamental fairness to American kids is an issue that needs to be looked into. Perhaps this will alleviate some of the problems of "agents" and MLB front-office types cheating kids out of their bonuses if the market is not some shadowy, black-market dealing in baseball talent.

Before the clock strikes the midnight deadline, I believe that the deal gets done. It may set another record and generate lots of fresh meat for the talk show circuit, but overall a Strasburg signing is good for baseball and great for the Nationals and their fans.