re young catchers in article blue cis pitt edu genetic pitt edu david m tate writes mss netcom com mark singer said i meant that one should not let the exception make the rule it s not an exception good players come up young most players who come up young will be good this has always been the rule are most players who come up young always good when they re young or later worse it s not a shift this is the way it has always been several detailed studies of this have been done and they ve all shown that players aren t coming up any younger or older than in the past and they aren t playing any more or less in the minors than they used to the only thing that shifts is our memories of the good old days damn i was afraid you would say that but all after the fact which makes it not applicable to the current discussion which is about how you decide whether to play the rookie who hasn t established himself in the majors over the mediocre veteran the padres played santiago that year because they clearly had nobody else worth playing well perhaps if the braves had no one else worth playing this year it would be lopez in there but they do have others worth playing at least in their opinion and i happen to agree both of these young men were highly touted defensive catchers expected to be among the best ever in baseball not by rec sport baseball consensus that may sound like an incredibly arrogant comment but i ve found that the sdcn consensus when one exists is right far more often than the media consensus or the opinions of baseball people affiliated with mlb i can believe that i m a newbie here so i ll take your word but alomar is a fine defensive catcher which was my statement above that is a solid reason for bringing him up at a tender age as long as they feel he can also hit a bit lopez does not have such a consensus about his defensive prowess and imho that is enough to give him that dreaded seasoning i don t know who knows i suppose the same people or similar who know he will be better than some other catcher these are of course just differing opinions i read that his arm is not that strong i suppose somewhere there is some measurement of sb ratios and that he is still learning to call a game that latter skill may be difficult to project on someone without an intimate knowledge of his performance but it is a tangible skill i disagree in that i don t think it is a tangible skill any more than leadership is i don t deny that it is a real skill and that some catchers may be much better than others at it but i really don t see any way that we could ever know who they are nichols s law of catcher defense is eerily accurate far too often for me to take defensive assessments of catchers very seriously sorry new don t know nichols law don t believe in catchers era but i am interested in pitchers eras with different catchers any info on that absolutely the evidence is piling up year after year the only other alternative is that the braves really don t know that their young players are on average better than their current starters i m not ruling out that kind of gross incompetence but i think the salary schedule explanation is more charitable in other words we know more than they do so the only logic behind a different decision than we would make must be financial i presume we feel this way about other franchises than atlanta no consider we know that the braves are about the strongest team in baseball right now even with olson and lemke and nixon and bream in the lineup they have as good a chance of repeating as champs this year as any team ever has it actually makes some sense to say rather than making our team marginally better this year by bringing up the young studs and dumping the elderly let s go ahead and compete this year with what we have and then bring up the studs only as we have to so that we ll still have them under reserve three years from now and beyond when the current team will be collecting pensions is it fair to the young players no does it make organizational sense i think it does well if it does make organizational sense one can hardly fault them for their decisions i mean please don t tell me how to run my business especially when i m being successful c i could make it or wins if you let me bring up lopez s listen bobby i d like to but the way i see it if he hits the big club this year we ll be paying mega arbitration bucks down the road in a couple of years and there s no way i want to do that and continues with we can win without him and then keep winning next year with him how s that i m sure you could be right you could also be smoking some illegal substance hey that s a joke don t get offended please hey i d love to be wrong about this if you think it s unlikely i d love to know why don t cite anybody s innate ethical rectitude though unless you know them personally well i can t cite anyone s ethical rectitude because i don t know what it means but again if it makes organizational sense then so be it baseball is a business and if there is a solid business reason for keeping lopez on the farm then that s what the braves should do i happen to believe that it s a baseball decision while you from your armchair may disagee i don t i think there is a lot of evidence to suggest the decision they made i predicted it among large guffaws from several at the start of spring training i think it is a very normal decision to have made it is certainly more reversible than to have started lopez in the bigs and have released one of their catchers sure it may be conservative it may also be logical i don t know what ethics have to do with it seems like pretty good common sense to me the beastmaster mark singer mss netcom com
