AAAA Wonders: Introducing Jeff Baisley

Plus, most MLB clubs have AAA closer to the main club. Oakland to Sacramento is 80 miles. Colorado Springs to Denver, about 100. Tucson to Phoenix, Fresno to SF, etc. Why the Angels don’t have a lower elevation AAA team in the sam time zone is beyond me.

I feel that is aggressive, but he hates that league.

However, at least two things have happened in recent years:

The Arkansas Travelers moved to Dickey Stephens park, and immediately went from a hitter’s park to pitcher’s park overnight.

The Quakes moved to Inland Empire, which is more of league neutral park than most Cal League parks, much more so than Rancho. It’s basically a pitcher’s park in a hitter’s league, given recent park factor data.

So now we have a better mix of pitchers and hitters parks, with Inland Empire being close to the median, still a tad hitter-friendly. Orem and Salt Lake remain launching pads, however, and it would be preferable to be able to watch our bubble guys more close to home.

A farm guy who is always “on the bubble” — often called up, often sent down. Spends years in AAA — never quite able to stick with a Major League bench, either because he is blocked by veterans, is sidelined by more elite prospects, or is intermittently injured. Often a combination of the above.

Most AAAA guys have one or two major flaws that prevent them from staying in the MLB — inability to hit breaking stuff, or general lack of power — or they are sort of good in every category, but not great in any. If not for the eccentricities of Angels management, folks like Willits, Wood and Mathis would likely be AAAA players, hopping from organization to organization.

It’s just a convenient way to name players that may play out their entire career in the minor leagues — as seasonal work instead of working at Home Depot or a construction job. They may play in other national leagues in Japan or Latin America, they may join independent leagues.

Occasionally they catch a lucky break and bust into the Majors for a year or two. Relievers tend to do that more often. Brendan Donnelly, for example, is a textbook AAAA reliever who finally broke through in 2002 and stuck for awhile.

With the Toronto Blue Jays.

lol

no baseball stadium in the city now

It’s already a pretty nice stadium in a relatively open area. At the very least, it would put an Angels farm team next to my parents’ house again and give me something to do when I go home to visit.

If thin air only made the ball fly farther, it would just be a matter of statistics. But breaking balls don’t break as much at high altitude, because there’s less rotation pressure to push the ball out of its ballistic trajectory. The batters at Salt Lake are seeing flatter pitches, which doesn’t really prepare them for the major leagues.

I can understand how it would mess with pitchers too. If your breaking ball is flat, you don’t really get a feel for how it would work at sea level. A strike on the corner in Salt Lake might drift too low or too wide in Anaheim. You can’t stay in the big leagues unless you can get the breaking ball over.