There was a comment from an owner quite a few years ago: "I have to spend millions to fund minor league teams so the two guys who might actually make it have somebody to play catch with." I mentioned this to a friend who is a minor league instructor. He just shook his head and said the owner was probably right.
Yeah yeah, cry me a river, billionaire.
To follow this logic to its ultimate extension, let's get rid of 99.998 percent of all youth and high school baseball, since that percentage of players are never going to make the majors.
Look at it this way: of the players who make a regular season roster in MLB, probably 75 percent are absolutely incandescent stars at age 10 -- they dominate their leagues like Superman.
By the new Sabereugenics player development philosophy, we should tell all those kids to quit playing baseball -- quit wasting their time dicking around with the great unwashed who are never going to make it -- and just spend the next 10 years on swing angle, video analysis of mechanics, microtargeted nutrition and weight training, etc etc.
So then when they're 20-21, we'll have an incredible crop of ultimately fine-tuned hitting and throwing automatons.
Now yes yes we all know stories about the plucky underdogs, the sleepers, the late bloomers, the guys who platooned in HS, then grew six inches and 75 pounds and exploded at juco, the guys who were 37th round draft picks, hit .214 their first year in rookie ball,
blah blah etc etc.
But how do you ever find those guys if there's no place for them to play baseball?
