Photo Credit: Sacramento River Cats
As the wonderful sports writer John Feinstein illustrated in his perfect little jewel of a book, Where Nobody Knows Your Name, Triple-A is the place where nobody (other than the fans) truly wants to be. Those who are on their way up can almost taste the next level; those who have been to the next level and been pushed back down again are often left processing a range of potential emotions, certainly none of which is gratitude.
It’s also just a weird environment for development to take place. The rosters are in a constant flux, with players coming and going so quickly that teammates might not even remember having played together. The Giants frequently take taxi squads on the road with them to handle contingencies that break out while they’re in other time zones — that can take players out of the rhythm of getting reps, removing them from any active duty for a week at a time or more. Others are being whipped in from waiver wire claims and back out again in dizzying fashion — the Giants released/DFA’d/traded 23 players** off of the Sacramento roster this year, and if I hadn’t just taken the time to look those transactions up, I’d have guessed the number to have been higher by about 10.
If all of that doesn’t make working on one’s game difficult enough, MLB has turned the minors into something of a laboratory for their potential rules changes. This year, PCL teams had to deal with an Automated Ball/Strike Calling System (ABS) that created a couple of different criticisms. One major problem was that, for most of the season, an individual’s strike zone wasn’t actually based on their body shape, it was just a mathematical calculation based on their height (so that players with different length torsos were not treated as if their zones were different). That was adjusted in the final weeks of the season. But the other major complaint was one that hit the Sacramento staff exceedingly hard.
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