Monday, July 13, 2015

The Sports Fix : Major League Baseball's All-Star Monday

We are starting a new section of The Rant called The Sports Fix.  It is exactly what it sounds like.  We find things in the sports world that need changed for the better.  Some of these items may be small ideas, just tinkering with the sport or event.  Others maybe complete overhauls.  Deep down I feel like I should be the commissioner of every sport, so this in my little way of doing that, even if it is just in a blog.

With the Major League Baseball All-Star Break upon us, our first Sports Fix is the skills challenge, or lack thereof.

Sure they have the Home Run Derby, which I give tons of credit to MLB for fixing this year to make it a shorter and simpler event (although the “extra time” thing is stupid).  I enjoyed the tournament style format in this year’s derby and the timed rounds created some real excitement at the end of each round.  Heck, Albert Pujols hit the 1st ever Buzzer Beater in MLB history to win his 1st round match-up.  What I want to see, is more of that.  More great athletes displaying their amazing skills on the field.  I want find out who the fastest players are.  I want to find out who the smoothest shortstops are and who covers the most ground.  I want to watch the best arms in the game throwing from the outfield.
 
Instead we get a celebrity softball game that nobody watches because it is full of C-List stars.   Would you rather see Chad Lowe, Chad not Rob, play softball or Billy Hamilton and Dee Gordon racing around the bases?  Andy Dalton, the Bengals QB, got booed at the softball game, but we are watching him play instead of watching Carlos Correa pick it at shortstop.  If “celebrities” like Miles Teller, Charissa Thompson, Cole Swindell and Justin Moore play softball and nobody is around to watch it, did it really matter? And I swear I didn’t make up any of those apparent celebrities, they all took part in this year’s game.  But we get that, instead of watching Yasiel Puig try to out throw Yoenis Cespedes.

Let’s break these down one at a time and figure out which ones are realistic and how we can make them happen.

FASTEST RUNNER:
This one is the easiest to do, with so many fun ways to do it.  Do the players run from 1st to 2nd like they are stealing bases?  Do we find out who is fastest going from 1st to 3rd?  Or maybe 3 bases, whether it be 1st to home or home plate to 3rd base.  No matter which way you decide to do it, it is bound to be exciting and entertaining.  Since I’m doing The Fix, I’m choosing that they run from 1st to home.  That is always an exciting play and it allows the guys who to kick it into overdrive as they are rounding 3rd on their way home.  The downfall in all of this is that the runners can’t actually race each other.  They will have to run one at a time and use electronic timers for official times.  It is not ideal, but it is how they do that for the NFL Combine and millions of people sit on their couch watching lineman run 40 yards with this method.  I think watching the fastest players in baseball run around the bases might be a little more compelling television.

They have 8 hitters in the Home Run Derby.  I think that is a good number for these other skill competitions too.  8 runners total, 4 from each league seems ideal.  You would want to give each runner at least 2 attempts, top time wins.  The order for the 1st round would be a complete random draw, the 2nd round would be reverse order of the 1st round times.  (If you had the best time in the 1st round, you get to go last and see what you need to beat before you go again.) 

I would imagine there would be a lot of guys that would want to take part in something like this.  So many players build their game on speed; this would be the ultimate bragging rights for those players.  Did anyone see Billy Hamilton steal a base this weekend on a throw back to the pitcher?  Yeah, we need to see him in a contest like this.  To pick the contestants we can either use the players with the most triples or the most stolen bases, or a mix of both.

BEST OUTFIELD ARM:
Time for the “Tom Emanski Outfield Assist Contest”, in which in a perfect world, Fred McGriff would present the winner with their trophy.

Everyone knows that there are players in baseball that you don’t run on, but now we are giving them a chance to prove which the absolute best are.  The logistics for this one are a little tougher than the Fastest Runner Contest, due to the multiple positions in the outfield.  Nevertheless, it can certainly be figured out.  For this contest you would have to use a mix of time and accuracy for scoring, which complicates things, but not too much.  The excitement level may not be on the level of the base running or Home Run Derby, but for the die-hard fans that love and appreciate good defense and a hose from the outfield, this could be pretty fun.

Again we use 8 outfielders, 4 from each league.  Each outfielder gets 16 throws, 6 from right field, 6 from left field and 4 from center field.  From right field you get 2 fly balls, throwing 1 to 3rd and 1 to home plate.  You get 2 ground balls and make the same throws.  Your final 2 throws are to 2nd base, 1 from the corner and the other from the gap.  From left field you have 2 throws to home plate, 1 on a fly ball and 1 on a ground ball.  You also get 2 throws to both 2nd and 3rd.  Both of those throws come from the gap and the corner.  In center field you have 4 throws, 2 to 3rd and 2 to home plate.  1 throw for each comes from a fly ball, the other from a ground ball.  Each throw is judged/scored based on the time it takes to get to the ball and to the throw to get to its target as well as it actually hitting its target.  The target would just be a simple net set up, maybe 4x4 or something at each base (or we can use the garbage cans like Emanski). 

The best way to score this event is using a clock to time how long it takes the outfielder to get to the ball, and then throw it to its target.  He ball must reach its target on 2 or fewer bounces.  If it misses the target or bounces more than twice, there is a time penalty added to the fielder’s total time.  To start, each outfielder throws from left field, then they all move to center field, and finally they all finish from right field.  In this competition you don’t need a final round.  Best total time wins.

SLICKEST INFIELDER:
This is probably the toughest to do, simply because the shortstops in baseball are almost entirely at that level because of their gloves.  Yes, some can hit as well, but the vast majority are there because they are smooth and consistent in the field.  What makes this contest difficult is that you need players to fail for the contest to be success and with them being the absolute best in the world, it may be tough.  But if we could pull it off, it sure would be fun to watch.

In this contest we only use 4 contestants, 2 from each league.  The main reason for just 4 is that normally there are only 2, maybe 3 shortstops per team to make the all-star game.  We could use any middle infielders or maybe even 3rd basemen, but we all know the best fielders are at SS, so let’s just keep it to them.  In this challenge we set up 2 boundaries, 60 feet apart, at the SS position.  The fielders will have 1 minute to field as many balls hit to them.  All the balls will be between the boundaries and will be randomly placed hits.  The shortstops job is to field and throw as many balls as possible in that time.  The player that successfully fields and throws accurately the most balls in 1 minute wins.  Being that this challenge is being held at SS, I think it is only fair to allow the position player to throw to both 1st base and 2nd base, but we have to limit how many throws they are allowed to throw to 2nd since it is a considerably easier throw.  I say 5.  There will be a player covering both 1st and 2nd base.  For it to be a successful conversion, you would need to field the ball cleanly and make a throw to either bag, which doesn’t pull the man off the bag.

I don’t believe there would be any need to have more than 1 round in this challenge, however a tiebreaker would be a :30 round in which you could only throw to 1st base.

So there you have it.  Three new skills challenges to add to the Home Run Derby instead of the god awful C-List Celebrity Softball Game. 

If you have any ideas or comments to make this even better I’d love to hear them.

thereitmeyerrant@hotmail.com

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