Is this the most talent rich across the board baseball has ever been? There is talent on every team. Raw talent that's already developed and will be stars, barring injuries, for many many years. these position players :
Harper, Trout, Rizzo, Wil Myers, Joc Pederson, G Stanton, Machado, PANIK!!!!!, Kris Bryant, Freeman, Arenado, A Russel, Gallo and many more
Pitchers: Gerrit Cole, Bumgarner, Kershaw, Gray, Wacha, Rosethanl, etc
I mean has the game ever seen so many young superstars at one time? I haven't even named everyone, those are just the ones that right now are legit stars.
Also one more regarding hall of fame- since the game has changed so much the last few decades that teams with strong bullpens and a coach who knows how to handle it can be dominant (ie Giants), will the hall voters embrace these players whose roles are almost as important as starters and are extremely valuable to a teams success. Will the hall ever vote in a relief pitcher that's not a closer is what i'm asking?
There has been a really dramatic shift towards younger players, and it's pretty freaking amazing. Fangraphs had a good post about this year's positional rookies (http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-historic-excellence-of-2015s-positional-rookies/), and Sports on Earth had a good one about under-23 stars the other day (http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/137648998/bryce-harper-mike-trout-manny-machado-history). I wonder, though, if these guys will be able to keep it up, or if we are going to see players' peak years shifting to earlier in their 20s as we get more stringent PED testing--in other words, are we going to realize that players' "primes" naturally occur earlier, and their careers end sooner--with these guys getting to the majors in their really early 20s, and retiring in their early to mid 30s, a la Dale Murphy? It will be interesting to see what happens, but let's hope at least some of these guys keep it up, because right now some of them are looking like all-timers.
ReplyDeleteAs for the relief pitcher getting into the HoF, I think it could be justifiable, but it will have to be somebody with an outsized impact that is either measurable, or highly visible because it's unusual. Wade Davis has been dominant, but he pitches an inning at a time because Ned Yost; if he turned into a multi-inning, long-relief weapon who started racking up wins by pitching the middle innings, he could make a case (especially if his success inspired a generation of imitators). However, that will require a guy who is suitable, and a manager who is willing to commit to something like that. We may see it in a few years as upper management pushes for this kind of thing, but right now I think it's unlikely. Ditto for guys like Ben Zobrist, right? He bounces around, has been pretty damn valuable, but is hard to define. We can't even get full time DHs like Edgar Martinez in--I don't see part-timers as strong candidates right now.
Relievers frequently went 3-4 innings per outing in the 80's and prior. Most of those guys never sniffed the HOF. I don't think anything will change. What comes to mind for me is Tyler Clippard when he was with the Nationals. He would win 10-11 games per year out of the bullpen. Does anybody know who he is? Probably not. Middle relievers will always be middle relievers: not good enough to start, stuff not electric enough to close, so middle relief.
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