There R Giants Top 50: 41-45
A grab bag of arms with questions... and maybe some answers!
Photo Credit: Shelly Valenzuela | San Jose Giants
Top 50 time is here! So far we’ve looked at:
Our brains are constantly seeking out patterns of order in a random, chaotic world — really, our minds are probably just inveterate jigsaw puzzlers that get bored and restless without a new puzzle in front of them to dig into (and stay up all night trying to finish — no, YOU got a 1000 piece puzzle for Christmas and didn’t sleep for three nights putting it together and now want to jam the analogy into any piece you can so as to make something “valuable” of the torturous experience!).
Wait, where was I? Oh yes, pattern recognition! Our brain’s perpetual search for order. As I start up each of these “mini-lists,” somehow I’m always compelled to seek a through line that connects the group — I suppose this is the partner to my “pattern creation” impulse in ordering the group in the first place!
As hinted at in the subtitle, my connective thread for today’s post is pitchers with some questions to answer before we can push them higher. Never mind the middle infielder sitting in the group — part of good pattern recognition is knowing how to ignore those pesky outliers! And, of course, it’s not like this is a real revelation — what kinds of pitcher should we expect to find down in the mid-40s of our list? Naturally, it’s going to be guys with something interesting about them, a path forward that can be envisioned and described (that’s what got them scouted and drafted in the first place, after all), but with obstacles before them that are greater in number, complexity, or scale than some of their contemporaries whom we’ll meet at higher levels.
In other words, our theme today is basically exactly the kinds of guys you’d expect to be here! Work with me folks, an intro needs a theme, and this is what I’ve come up with. We’re going to have questions of health, of stuff, of command, but we’re also going to glimpse a lot of things to like if some of those questions get answered in the coming year. Let’s go!
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