Observations, Insinuations,
Ruminations and Unvarnished Opinions . . .
THE SUN IS ABOUT to rise in the west . . . The Mississippi is running south to north . . . Obama's Super Six Committee will announce bipartisan agreement on everything and the Republic will be saved from becoming a ward of China . . . St. Peter just posted a headline on the Pearly Gates bulletin board: "Adultery Doesn't Count!"
And I'm about to give baseball commissioner Bud Selig an unequivocal double thumbs up for once again achieving labor peace in our time.
Well, OK, there are a couple of "quivocals" in the new, 5-year Basic Agreement that guarantees the Pastime will be played without disruption through the 2016 season.
But you give a little and take a little. In this case, the players gave up their resistance to testing for human-growth hormone-related PEDs. Blood testing will commence Opening Day. Bodog.com already is posting odds on whether the first player nailed will be a pitcher, outfielder or infielder, a superstar or journeyman, and how deep into the season a positive test will turn up.
The players won increases in the minimum salary that will max in yearly increments beyond $500,000 from the current $440K. But they gave up major concessions in the way MLB's out-of-control compensation for high draft picks is structured. If you're a Division I college coach, you probably danced a little jig next to your desk when the tentative BA agreement was announced.
Let's take the case of 2008 Phillies first-rounder Anthony Hewitt. There was a sharp division among scouts on the Brooklyn teenager's upside. If you went by the raw power he displayed against batting-practice speed pitches, he had a higher ceiling than the national debt.
But if you were suspicious of his numbers at preppy Salisbury School in Connecticut, then factored in his inability to get game-speed pitching out of the batting cage, his lack of a defined position and raw baseball IQ, you were projecting major bust potential.
Hewitt, a bright kid, had the leverage of a Vanderbilt ride. The Phillies gambled and offered his athlete's body $1.4 million to learn to play baseball. Going into his fifth season, Hewitt has yet to play beyond Class A Lakewood, which he repeated last season after a shambles of a 2010 season. Anthony strikes out once every 2.83 ABs. His career batting average is .218 with an OBP of .260 and OPS of .626.
