Master Index of Archived Threads


Buttercup Zack

batmagadanleadoff Jun 30 2013 10:06 AM

[youtube]iol0B-clFFM[/youtube] Hype heaped on phenoms like NY Mets Zack Wheeler is dehumanizing. Strasburg: "They build you up just to bring you down. BY Andy Martino It is dehumanizing, what happens to phenoms like Zack Wheeler over the long arc of a professional baseball career. In the minor leagues, you are an abstraction, a blank screen onto which fans and media project hopes that have little to do with who you actually are. Then you arrive in the big city and, as any person would, reveal your normal imperfections. You are not a savior, but a human, and the public can grow bitter. Ask Mike Pelfrey, a first-round pick who became a solid pitcher, and was seen by many fans as the devil by the middle of his Mets years. Or even better, ask the guy whose debut brought more hype than perhaps any pitcher in history, Stephen Strasburg. “What happens is, that they build you up just to bring you down,” Strasburg said Saturday. “They never get it. Unfortunately, that’s people who never played the game. You really can’t control what people write or say.” As Wheeler -- young and talented, not yet great, and working earnestly to improve -- makes his Citi Field debut Sunday, it is worth questioning all this craziness, and imagining what a more humanistic process would look like. What if we understood that baseball brings mostly failure, even for its most talented players? What if we did avoided hyping minor leaguers, and just understood that athletes surprise us, in ways good and bad, once they compete at this level? A rare set of circumstances created the frenzied Wheeler buildup: He was acquired for Carlos Beltran, one of the greatest players in franchise history; he arrived at a time when the organization was marketing its future over its present, and became a symbol of that trend; he dazzled scouts in the minor leagues with raw talent, and copy-hungry writers like me relayed their quotes to the public without context; he followed Matt Harvey, who has worn the phenom crown as well as anyone could, convincing some fans that it can happen again. Because of those factors, Wheeler’s major league debut generated an absurd volume of attention --- and that buzz drowned reality. Wheeler is a high-ceiling talent with flaws in his delivery, who might not even be ready for the major leagues. But he is here, and he is working to improve, which is all we should ask of a young player. “When you go out there and give it everything you have, you can sleep well at night," Strasburg says. “And that’s everything you can do. There is not a single pitcher who is going to come up here and not have struggles at some point in his career. The sooner you can deal with the failure, the better you will be.” Despite the public’s desire to see something more, Wheeler’s initial weeks in the major leagues are more about process than results. He was tipping his breaking ball during his first two starts, and the issue contributed to overall inefficiency in a loss to the White Sox on Tuesday. As Wheeler came out of the game, pitching coach Dan Warthen pulled him aside and said, “Are you ready to get to work?” Wheeler was indeed ready, and the two focused in between starts on smoothing out a delivery that talent evaluators say has too many moving parts. Where Harvey’s motion is simple, minimizing the risk of both command issues and arm injuries, Wheeler’s is more herky-jerky. “There are two things we’re trying to do,” Terry Collins explained. “Number one, make sure his delivery is very consistent, arm slots, all of the things. So that there is any perhaps evidence of him tipping his pitches, that can be taken aside and making sure and there is no difference in where his arm angle is.” That is interesting, a young person trying to adjust to a higher degree of competition than he has ever faced, and it is all the Wheeler can worry about, if he wants to succeed. Just listen to Strasburg, the world’s foremost authority on the subject. “Do you want to go out there and help the team win, or do you think it’s your own show?” Strasburg said. “It’s going to be a little bit harder if you go out there trying to exceed expectations, because a lot of times expectations aren’t -- they aren’t real.” Well said. Hype is fiction, and it is actually cruel: Building a man up is just as wrong as tearing him down, because neither honors who he really is. Maybe we could just watch, and appreciate the complexity of Wheeler’s learning process. http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/baseba ... trasburg-t

MFS62 Jun 30 2013 10:11 AM Re: Buttercup Zack

Sort of like when Martino finally gets a girl to say "yes", then takes off his tracksuit. Later

batmagadanleadoff Jun 30 2013 08:56 PM Re: Buttercup Zack

[youtube]iol0B-clFFM[/youtube] Don't build Zack Wheeler up so quickly is, apparently, the topic of today. Two more variations on the theme: Brian Costa: Wheeler Shows Rarity of Harvey Zack Wheeler hasn't been fantastic so far—but not everybody can be Matt Harvey, and even Harvey faced some adversity in his first few starts. You can tell yourself to be logical, to be realistic about Zack Wheeler. But then you watch Matt Harvey dominate the Washington Nationals on Friday night, one more step in his quantum leap from rookie to Cy Young contender. You arrive at Citi Field on the last day of June and see shirts that say "Wheelz Up," highlighting the arrival of another top pitching prospect. For once, the place is packed. And at that moment, tempering expectations seems awfully boring. Realism becomes futile. "There's such a buildup," Mets manager Terry Collins said, "that it's hard to fight the hype." And so the reaction in some corners, on a day when Wheeler is knocked around for five runs in just 4 2/3 innings, becomes equally over the top: Fire the pitching coach. Change his mechanics. Do something, anything, to remedy this crisis before all hope is lost. Mind you, this was Wheleer's third major-league start. He is 23 years old. If anything, Sunday was a reminder of what a rare and unique gift Harvey has become for the Mets. It is almost unfathomable that just one year ago, he was still in Triple-A, as the Mets debated whether he was ready for the majors. Someone who scouts baseball players for a living actually told ESPN New York—anonymously, lucky for him—that Harvey was "Pelfrey without the split or breaking ball." Today he's Clemens without the age or downfall. Harvey leads all qualified National League starting pitchers in earned-run average (2.00), strikeouts (132) and general nastiness. He is allowing just 0.85 walks and hits per inning, the lowest rate among NL starters. He deserves to start for the NL in the All-Star Game at Citi Field in a couple of weeks. The good part of this, for Wheeler, is it takes some attention and scrutiny away from him. The unfair part is it raises the expectations for him to a point that borders on unrealistic. People hear Collins say, as he did again Sunday, that he believes the two will compete against each other, feed off each other, and they imagine some kind of Starsky and Hutch act playing out in Flushing this summer. Dueling aces! The savior and his understudy! What gets lost in all this is that Harvey is the exception, not the rule. Take a glance at the statistical leaderboards this year and you'll find that even at the top, most pitchers went through some degree of early growing pains. Cliff Lee had a 5.43 ERA the year before he first received Cy Young votes. Clayton Kershaw finished his rookie season with an ERA of 4.26. Even Justin Verlander, whose ascent to stardom was almost instantaneous, had a 6.86 ERA after his first four starts. He went on to win the AL Rookie of the Year award in 2006. For Wheeler to have a 5.06 ERA, some fastball command issues and a mechanical glitch or two after three major-league starts doesn't mean he'll follow the same path. But it's not an indictment of him, either. It just means, as pitching prospects go, he's pretty normal. This is what development looks like. A promotion to the majors does not mean someone is a finished product. Of course, no one wants to hear this now. Not when so many other aspects of the Mets' season require some combination of patience, Advil, Tums or tequila to endure. The Mets, understandably, have done little to quell the excitement for Wheeler's first few games. SNY cameramen have documented such memorable moments as "Wheeler comes off field after batting practice." Wheeler is the tonic people have been waiting for. But there is a reason the Mets have tried to stockpile pitching prospects over the past few years. And there's a reason they'll have to think long and hard about which ones and how many, if any, to trade for a position player. Many don't pan out, be it because of injury or underperformance. And among those that do, very few do so as quickly and as brilliantly as Harvey. On a day when it was easy to lose perspective, it's worth remembering this: The last time a Mets pitcher allowed five earned runs in one of his first three major-league starts, they were playing in San Diego. The year was 2012. The pitcher who was so clearly doomed by this outing? Matt Harvey. Wheeler may have more days like Sunday ahead. And it may still work out all right. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 16022.html _______________ And G-Fafif's blog piece Once Upon Citi Field, which includes a reference and citation to one of my favorite Mets books of all time, Leonard Schecter's Once Upon the Polo Grounds. Shecter covered the Polo Grounds Mets for the New York Post and is widely credited with cultivating, if not inventing, the team's early image as lovable losers.

Vic Sage Jul 01 2013 09:32 AM Re: Buttercup Zack

I'm sorry, but wasn't Andy Martino one of the flock hyping the Zackster in the first place?