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MLB 2020 Catch-All thread


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58 minutes ago, fathom said:

Before caulfield can say it....Tatis Jr might be the best player on the planet the next decade

Bumgarner just doesn’t have anything.

What’s impressed me this year is he’s continuing to work on his defense...and he’s driving so many balls for power to RF.   Not just RCF, but even down the line.   But he can clearly pull a ball when he needs to.   Obviously still striking out a lot, but you start talking A Rod, Griffey, Jr. and Trout in terms of an impact at age 20-21, and missing almost half last year but already sitting on 30 career homers.   Plus, he has as big and infectious a personality as Trout is lacking.  But he’s still respectful of the game from growing up around it.  He knows how to have fun, that’s for sure.    He’s must see tv right now, like Dwight Gooden early in his career.

Edited by caulfield12
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15 hours ago, fathom said:

Before caulfield can say it....Tatis Jr might be the best player on the planet the next decade

 

https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29630642

6 minute video, watch at your own peril

 

Tatis Jr. is bringing the joy back to baseball

 Jeff Passan traveled to Fernando Tatis Jr.'s hometown in the Dominican Republic in December to find out what he thinks about the pressure of family legacy, and again via Zoom in July, to ask him about the pressure of representing "the future of the game."

Edited by caulfield12
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When Marco Paddy, the international scouting director for the Chicago White Sox, watched Tatis work out in 2013 and asked him, "What do you want to be?" he offered a top-of-the-class response: "The Dominican Derek Jeter."

"I saw all the respect that people have for him, and my dad always preached that to me: respect," Tatis says. "When I see Derek Jeter, I see respect, and that's what I want to be. Just a guy who plays for his team. A guy that embrace what he have. A guy that is going to carry the team, is going to help others and is going to establish himself and be a franchise player."


Twenty-three years later (after his father signed for $8,000), on July 2, 2015, Fernando Tatis Jr. received $825,000 to sign with the White Sox -- to be their Dominican Derek Jeter. Back then, nobody could've projected that he would grow into a physical specimen. Tatis Jr. was 6 feet. His father was only 5-11. His aunt Rosie, Maria's sister, still calls him mi flaco -- my skinny boy. He was, in many ways, a classic Dominican prospect, more projection than present skills.

 

In no way did that lessen the family's signing-day celebration. There was a two-layer cake -- one with black pinstripes, the other with red piping to resemble a baseball -- topped by a White Sox hat. Tatis traded his white sport coat for a White Sox jersey and posed for pictures, including one with his father and his grandfather, who had reconciled when Tatis Sr. broke through in the major leagues.

Tatis Sr. wore a T-shirt that day with two words in all capital letters: TATIS DYNASTY. Their name is their legacy, and Tatis Sr. wanted his children to recognize that. 

"In the old times, when they still have castles and stuff like that," Tatis Jr. says, "they used to have a big shield in front of the castle with the king or the family name. That's how I see my family. From that old time. All the power that they have."

The Tatis dynasty's sigil, he says, would be a bat, a ball and a Bible. Or maybe four balls: one for his grandfather, one for his father, one for him and one for Elijah, Fernando's brother and an 18-year-old shortstop who signed last year for $500,000 with the White Sox.

Before Tatis went stateside for his first season, his father sat him down. They talked about what it means to be a Tatis, about the fragility of the game, about what being Dominican in MLB entails.

"Only God can stop him," Tatis Sr. says. "Yes. He can be whatever kind of player he wants to be right now. He got all the skill. He got the determination in the game. Every time he's hitting the field, he only have one [thought] in his mind: winning the game. And he's going to win the game at every level. You cannot blink your eye on him, because he's going to challenge you. He's going to get you."

 

The White Sox traded Tatis to the Padres in 2016 in an effort to bolster their playoff hopes with aging starter James Shields. Today it's easy to call the deal this generation's Brock for Broglio, a trade so lopsided history excised its principals' first names. Just because Tatis said he wanted to be the Dominican Derek Jeter doesn't mean that anybody, even the greatest soothsayers in the player-development community, would have conceived he actually could be.

Tatis had grown to 6-2 by the time he left Juan Dolio for the White Sox's complex in Arizona. He was still flaco, but scouts trawling the back fields during extended spring training noticed the development. All of the instincts and actions on which his backers dreamed were turning tangible. Padres pro scouts swinging through the White Sox's complex in Glendale were asked to give Tatis a look. The reports agreed: If a trade scenario with Chicago ever materialized, he was the perfect target.

"We didn't make the trade for Fernando saying [we're] ultimately gonna guarantee that he's gonna be this level of player at the major league level," Preller says. "But our scouts did a good job, led by [pro scouting director] Pete DeYoung, telling me that, Hey, we think we have a guy that could be a very important player for our franchise."

 

On June 22, 2016, just 18 days after the trade, Tatis debuted for the Arizona League Padres and went 0-for-5 with two strikeouts. The next day, he got his first hit and drove in two runs. Five days after his debut, he hammered his first professional home run -- against the White Sox's Arizona League team. So began Tatis' rapid ascent to the major leagues. At 18, he grew another inch and flayed the full-season Midwest League, where the average age was over 21. In Double-A the next season, he sprouted another inch and cemented his full-blown phenom status. Tatis ended 2018 hoping to debut in the major leagues at some point in 2019.

Before that, he returned home with an even deeper purpose. His father had been named manager of Estrellas Orientales, the Dominican Republic Professional Baseball League team in San Pedro. For a city as rich in baseball history as San Pedro, Estrellas were historically bad. They'd last won a championship in 1968...


https://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/29510713/fernando-tatis-jr-bringing-joy-back-baseball

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8 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

 

https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/29630642

6 minute video, watch at your own peril

 

Tatis Jr. is bringing the joy back to baseball

 Jeff Passan traveled to Fernando Tatis Jr.'s hometown in the Dominican Republic in December to find out what he thinks about the pressure of family legacy, and again via Zoom in July, to ask him about the pressure of representing "the future of the game."

Who was the guy here with the "James Shields" gif? 🤔

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9 minutes ago, Big Hurtin said:

Who was the guy here with the "James Shields" gif? 🤔

Yeah, remember that...I’m with Big Game James?

 

Fernando Tatis Jr. through 100 career games (444 PA): .320/.385/.625, 30 HR, 20 SB. Tatis is the first MLB shortstop to hit 30 or more home runs in his first 100 big-league games.

Also the first Padre to hit 7 homers in the first 15 games of a season, now 8 for his first 16.

Edited by caulfield12
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