Some administration news . . . I'm looking for reader submissions. If you want me to highlight a news item or you want to take your own take on it for me to throw it up here, email me at camdendepot at gmail. If can find a few writers with top notch skills, I'll grant access for them to post at will.
Onto the four quotes:
ESPN's story on the Dominican Prospect League where unsigned Dominican players take part in a 25 game schedule.
"Also, though most teams' scouts have shown up regularly for games, Mejia notes that some teams -- like the Chicago White Sox and the Baltimore Orioles -- still have not had a regular presence at games."Roch chasing the story with an interview of International Scouting Director John Stockstill.
"We do have people reporting to us," Stockstill said.Brian Mejia's, founder of the Dominican Prospect League, response.
Stockstill also pointed out that many of these players are showcased at other events. "And many of them have probably been at our facility and our camp," he said. "And that's not just Baltimore. That's probably a lot of other clubs, as well."
In other words, the Orioles aren't depending only on this prospect league to evaluate the talent over there. On any given day, you might have 20 workouts taking place at various complexes.
This whole DPL and O's presences was blown out of proportion. I was asked a question by ESPN reporter and gave a simple answer. It's not like the O's don't scout, evaluate and sign players in DR. The question was asked, "how many teams are consistently evaluating players at the DPL games". I gave him a simple answer.A year later and this is a quote from Andy MacPhail.
The O's have many other things to worry about than being at all 25 DPL games. They do what they do and sign who they like... Budget, sign ability, need and roster spots all come into play when making signing decision in DR. The DR is small but players are everywhere, I'm sure they are doing their due diligence, I'm also sure everyone in BAL FO wants to win asap, any opportunity they have to sign the right guy they will do it.
They're not playing baseball anymore. What these guys prepare them to do is to come in all these complexes -- and now we have one of them -- and they'll do workouts. They're not playing the game anymore. They're guys who have been developed over three or four years to look good in a three or four day tryout. And there are those old fashioned amongst us who are concerned that's not really the look we need to make a good read on a 17-year-old kid out of the Dominican. We would much rather see them play games.Do these quotes seem as peculiar to me as they do to you?
Camden Depot Articles on this.
Baltimore May Be Dropping the Easy Ones, Too... (January 6, 2010)
Roch Kobatko Chases Down Stockstill about the DPL (January 7, 2010)
The DPL Trilogy: The Agent/Co-founder Responds (January 9, 2010)
Revisiting the Orioles International Effort (February 13, 2011)
I agree this is really a head-scratcher. At the end of the day, though, the fanbase doesn't know any better and is unlikely to keep track of these inconsistencies. Mr. MacPhail's audience at the time was probably substantively unaware of the DPL comments.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first passed along the DPL story last year at the Orioles Hangout, Roch essentially shrugged it off as "overreaction" and treated the situation like it was an inconvenience for him to check-up on the O's presence at the DPL. To be honest, I think he was a little dismissive. These recent comments from Mr. MacPhail do at least make me feel like I was correct in pointing out Baltimore's actions, or reported lack thereof.
If you cover the Orioles for a living and are not trying to get to the bottom of what exactly is and is not being done on the international front, I'm sorry but I think you are dropping the ball.
I completely agree.
ReplyDeleteWhat concerns me is this: your job is covering a baseball team. That is it. The head of that team tells you that the only way the team can compete is to invest in the minor league program instead of spending money in free agency.
So, what does the local Baltimore media do? Completely ignore the primary hypothesis of MacPhail's approach. I recognize that Orioles baseball is not the overthrowing of Mubarak, but if ones job is to solely cover the Orioles . . . I would think some effort would be taken to consider what is being said, whether the team is actually doing what it says, and then whether that action really makes sense.
It continually perplexes me. Maybe the audience does not have a care in what is going on, but it is just so overwhelmingly intellectually lazy to gloss over these things.
I agree entirely that this is what the media should be doing. Unfortunately, doing some serious investigative journalism on something like this could really step on the toes of the people that the beat writers rely on for their daily work. If you make those "sources" angry, then you aren't going to get the scoop on trade rumors, injuries, or playing time. This is far from the first time the baseball media has dropped the ball; there was another pretty big event that everyone turned a blind eye toward. I believe it was called the steroid era.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm just overly cynical, but I basically use the beat writers for headlines. They let me know who is on the trading block, who is hurt, and who the team is pursuing in free agency. I do not care whether or not Roch or Dan Connolly think the Vlad signing is a good idea. There are infinitely better sources for analysis, including (and especially) you, Crawdaddy.
This isn't a problem limited to sports reporting; it's also endemic to political reporting, financial reporting, and virtually every other genre. The people who rely on the insiders for a daily story almost never crack the long-run cases. It's the reporters that have some distance from the day-to-day that have the freedom to really attack the system.
Also, if you basically view this as "Peter Angelos won't let me sign teenage Dominican kids" and the statements simply as rationalizations of that ownership philosophy, they become a lot easier to understand.
Speaking of political reporting and actually checking up on the facts in the statements of the people you cover, there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/14/journalism/index.html
I think the fact that MacPhail is saying these things rather than doing him is one of the big reasons why I don't feel like his contract should be renewed.
ReplyDeleteHave you tried emailing Zrebiec on the issue? He has access and independence.
I never really try to contact the professional writers. I figure if someone here who reads this stuff is moved, then maybe they will turn it over to the pros and they will write about it.
ReplyDeleteThat roundabout way has worked before with Roch and Melewski. Roch was kind enough to cite us once.
Good reaad
ReplyDelete