OC Register: Hoornstra: Who needs the hot stove when MLB has a week like this?

[AngelsWin.com]

The Angels cut ties with Alex Meyer, a pitcher who was once touted as a future stronghold in their starting rotation. The Dodgers traded for pitcher Alex McCreery, a 6-foot-9 left-hander who has one game of major league experience.

Yawn. When does the hot stove heat up again?

In case you missed it, this was an exciting week for Major League Baseball – not in terms of player movement, but the future of a sport that is perpetually accused of growing stagnant. I don’t know that legalized gambling partnerships are a good thing for the league, or that the A’s will ever get a new ballpark in Oakland. If nothing else, this week pointed the way forward for baseball in some interesting ways.

FRIDAY

While the rest of America shopped its way out of a food coma, the Minnesota Twins named Wes Johnson as their new pitching coach.

Who?

Johnson’s relative anonymity outside college baseball circles is precisely the story. The 47-year-old coached for Dallas Baptist, Mississippi State, Central Arkansas and Southern Arkansas before being named the pitching coach at the University of Arkansas in 2016. He spent only two years with the Razorbacks before landing the same job with the Twins. Johnson never played or coached a day in professional baseball.

Sign up for Home Turf and get exclusive stories every SoCal sports fan must read, sent daily. Subscribe here.

That profile is almost as under-the-radar as the Dodgers’ new hitting coach, Robert Van Scoyoc. A 2005 graduate of Hart High School, Van Scoyoc is listed on MaxPreps.com as appearing in six games as a senior with the Indians’ baseball team, collecting one hit in 12 at-bats.

Slowly but surely, Van Scoyoc built a successful career as an independent hitting consultant. The Dodgers hired him in 2016. The Diamondbacks hired him in 2017. Now he is a full-time, uniformed hitting coach at baseball’s highest level.

Put together, Johnson and Van Scoyoc represent a big leap forward for coaches who have embraced modern analytics and a granular, data-driven approach to teaching – with no professional experience necessary.

MONDAY

The Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum publicized its recent discovery of film featuring Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on a barnstorming tour in Stockton in 1927. The footage had been privately held in Los Angeles – at the Japanese American National Museum, of all places – with no knowledge of its historical significance until now.

The discovery rekindled memories of the days of barnstorming, those pre-satellite days when the best players traveled to places where major league games were unwatchable. Japan got a glimpse of this on Nov. 8-15, when a group of major leaguers played exhibition games in Tokyo, Nagoya and Hiroshima.

Want a better example of barnstorming?

Cleveland Indians pitcher Trevor Bauer, the former UCLA standout, announced on his Twitter account that he would pay for a full hitting assessment at the Driveline Baseball facility in Kent, Wash., “for the first 10 current affiliate ball hitters or ex big-leaguers with 6.9+ years of service” time who were willing to take live at-bats against him in the offseason.

The hitter who takes Bauer up on his offer might not invite an audience or a television crew. The barnstorm might happen off-camera in Driveline’s barn. Then again, if Houston Astros third baseman Alex Bregman continues to up the stakes, the spotlight will only grow.

Bauer followed up his original tweet: “Tag who you would like to see me match up against! You won’t @abreg_1” – Bregman’s Twitter handle. “I’ll save them for the postseason next year ;)” Bregman replied. Bauer called Bregman “soft.” Bregman replied with a link to a YouTube clip of a home run he hit against Bauer in the American League Division Series. Game on.

By Wednesday, Bauer had challenged Bregman to take live at-bats at Driveline and pledged to donate $4,206.90 to charity for every home run Bregman hits. Who said basketball players have the best offseason trash talk?

TUESDAY

The website Legal Sports Report obtained transcripts of a Nov. 2012 court deposition involving Bud Selig, baseball’s commissioner at the time. “Gambling on a sport,” Selig said, “on any sport but on this sport is what you want to talk to me about, is I think the deadliest of all things that can happen. It’s evil, it creates doubt and destroys your sport.”

Related Articles

• Dodgers announce 2019 coaching staff
• Dodgers acquire minor-league left-hander Adam McCreery
• Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen undergoes heart procedure
• Angels’ Dino Ebel expected to be among Dodgers’ coaching hires
• Angels add Shawn Wooten to big league coaching staff

Legal Sports Report published the quote in May, but it didn’t go viral until Tuesday when Major League Baseball announced a partnership with MGM Resorts International to make the gaming conglomerate “the first-ever Official Gaming Partner of MLB and Official Entertainment Partner of MLB.”

MGM will reportedly pay the league $80 million over the next four years, more costly than its landmark partnership with the NBA. The working agreement will allow MGM Resorts to be identified as an MLB-Authorized Gaming Operator and have non-exclusive access to MLB’s official statistics feed. MGM will also have exclusive access to Statcast data; exactly how that will entice gamblers to play MGM’s books remains to be seen.

In addition, MLB announced in a press release that “MGM Resorts and MLB will work together on comprehensive responsible gaming measures and work to protect the integrity of the game both on and off the field.”

Separating baseball’s integrity from the “deadly” element of “evil” will provide the most compelling theater on baseball’s new frontier. Perhaps such a partnership was inevitable once the Supreme Court opened the playing field for the expansion of legalized gambling in May. Only time will tell if MLB is taking the right approach, or if Selig can add the title of prophet to his title of Commissioner Emeritus. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground.

WEDNESDAY

The artist’s renderings of the latest Oakland A’s ballpark proposal are nothing if not ambitious.

The parking lots are out of sight – literally – but the waterfront container cranes rise higher than Mt. Davis from beyond the outfield bleachers. Rows of seats are shaded by the trees of a park overhead. You probably don’t care that this 34,000-seat stadium is privately financed and would be surrounded by “a mix of … affordable housing, offices, restaurants, retail, small business space, parks, and public gathering spaces” – unless you live in Oakland, where your tax bill might actually leave room for dessert. Seriously, though: where are we supposed to park?

Until any land is purchased, the A’s can only dream. What a dream, though. The worst facility in Major League Baseball, which the A’s share jointly with an NFL team and a persistent sewer leak, would be replaced by one of the most forward-thinking venues in any sport.

The artist’s renderings of the latest Oakland A’s ballpark proposal are nothing if not ambitious. No land has been purchased for the 34,000-seat privately financed waterfront ballpark at Howard Terminal. (Illustration by Bjarke Ingels Group)

View the full article