Thinking Out Loud

Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda

March 30, 2008

Pat Paxton,  College Baseball Hub

College baseball players should be proud that they are college baseball players.

They work hard. Balancing school, practice, weights, games, travel, and social life is a huge challenge. If they didn’t love their sport, they couldn’t do what they do. The only home for a non-committed player, is a perennially weak and unorganized program, where there is no emphasis on the work of getting ready to play.

Contention:   Succeeding at the collegiate level appears to be half ability and half desire.

Some may divide it into thirds, adding “work ethic”. However, I see work ethic as part of “Desire”, because if you have enough desire, you are willing to do the work. If you don’t have enough desire, you won’t do the work.

Honestly, seeing what all they have to go through, if they didn’t have great desire, they couldn’t be a college baseball player. Which leads me to the point of this rambling.

A few years ago, there was a pretty good baseball player who was in ninth grade, who decided not to try out for the high school team. That’s fine. However, he then spent the entire spring and following summer, announcing to everyone how he would have been in the starting line up had he decided he wanted to play. He did nothing, while the actual players did all of the work. Yet, he proclaims he would have been a starter. That bugs me.

Taking that scenario up a level, there was a standout high school player at a neighboring school, that was blessed with quite a bit of ability and physical attributes. He was getting some D1 interest, and appeared to have the ability (half of the requirements) to play D1 ball. However, he chose not to play in college. He was going to concentrate on being a full time student.  Again, that’s totally fine.

However, there was a newspaper article written later on, lamenting about “what might have been” if only he had played. And, “Oh, what a great talent”, and “How far could he have gone?” “We’ll never know.” Blah, blah, blah. The player was quoted as saying something to the effect, “Yeah, I could be playing college ball right now”. That bugs me.

I contend that he would not have made it in college baseball. He didn’t have the second, equally important half of the formula for success in collegiate baseball: Desire.

If you don’t love it, and aren’t dying to play the game, you aren’t going to make it through the monotonous running and long tossing of September. You’ll decide to turn off your alarm clock, roll over, and snooze through your 6 AM weight lifting session in November. You’ll say, “Hey, this my Christmas break. I shouldn’t have to condition over the holidays, or report back to school on January 2^nd.” You’ll decide it’s too much trouble to spend six days a week in the off-season lifting, running, throwing, hitting in the cage, practicing, and doing yoga (yes, yoga) on Saturday mornings.

And we’ve not even touched on doing all of that, traveling, missing classes, and keeping your grades up like all the other students. Correction: the players have the added pressure of not being allowed to be a player if they don’t make the necessary grades. In addition to all of this, they never get to go home for a weekend during the entire spring semester, and only during Thanksgiving in the fall. Throw a girlfriend into that mix, and you’ve got absolutely no free time. However, an understanding girlfriend can do a lot good.

Let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with not having the desire to play college baseball. Not playing is fine. Just don’t say you could have.

Thank you for allowing me to vent about a pet peeve of mine: The people who chose not to play college baseball, but then have the nerve to say they could have. I say they could not have.

So, here’s to you, Actual College Baseball Player, who possesses both requirements for playing college baseball: ability and desire. Whether you’re the star of your team, or never get to play, you are to be congratulated. Not many can do what you do. The work habits you’re developing now will serve you well throughout your lifetime.

Thinking Out Loud

 Is Wednesday the New Sunday?

March 6, 2008

By Pat Paxton, College Baseball Hub

Is Wednesday the new Sunday?  Didn't Reese Witherspoon say something like that in Legally Blonde?  No, I think she said something about orange being the new pink.  I can check that next time it's on TBS (it's probably starting in 20 minutes).  Don't know about that orange / pink thing, but there may be something to this Wednesday / Sunday thing. 

Everyone knows that Sundays in D1 ball can be slugfests.  You can get dizzy watching players round the bases.  Not every Sunday, of course, but more often than not.  Most of the time it's attributed to pitching quality.  After seeing a team's best on Friday night, their pretty-darn-close-to-best on Saturday, Sunday's can be a welcome event for hitters. 

 Of course, there are exceptions.  And there is certainly not an attempt here to make light of a Sunday pitcher.  After all, he is a weekend starter.  A conference starter.  A very envied position to hold.  The more likely culprit is bullpen depth.

With the D1's delayed, uniform start date compressing the season, teams are playing more mid-week games.  On Wednesday games in particular, this creates problems and opportunities for coaches.  Problems by having to dig deeper into their pitching staff.  Opportunities, in that maybe they'll uncover a gamer who can help them the rest of the season.

So, with teams exploring the depths of their pitching staffs on Wednesdays, will Wednesday become the new Sunday?  My first thought is "Yes", we will see high scoring shootouts on Wednesdays.  Of course, if I were to shoot holes in my own theory, there would be several ways to do it. 

For starters, mid-week games are always non-conference, and based on convenient geography.  Many times that creates mismatches.  Generally speaking, teams in the same conference are of a similar talent level.  Step outside of your conference, and you may be taking a big step up, or a big step down in competition.  Where there's a mismatch, there could be a blow out.  The point is that a lot of mid-week games are already high scoring (at least for one team), and it may be tough to tell if high output is because of the mismatch, or a stretched pitching staff.  In theory, if both teams are going deep into their staffs, both teams should be scoring more.  However, in a mismatch game, it's a good bet that the stronger team's lesser used pitchers are still pretty dern good.

My Wednesday / Sunday thesis, also assumes that the opponent on Tuesday and Wednesday are of the same talent level, and on Tuesday, coaches would use the best pitchers available, then what's left over on Wednesday.  However, if the Tuesday opponent looks less daunting than Wednesday's, the the better pitchers may be "saved" for Wednesday, thus making Wednesday the lower scoring affair.  Whew!  My noggin hurts.  We parent / fan / non-coaches tend to over-think a tad.

This is all gobbly-gook anyway, because all the strategy in the world can be employed, but it's all subject to injuries, weather, attitudes, revenge, luck, and bad umps.  That's the neat thing about baseball in general, and college baseball in particular.  Who know's what the heck is going to happen.  Some of the best things in college baseball occur during mid-week games, in my opinion, when Davids are kicking Goliaths in the shin.

Well, I can't find "Legally Blonde" on the tube tonight.  Guess I'll have to wait until the weekend to catch Reese in that Playboy Bunny outfit.  Thanks for allowing me to think out loud, and for not laughing loud enough for me to hear you.