Quote from: BigPoppa on April 26, 2013, 11:03:58 pm

I am waiting for Spence to have at this thread... Seems right up his alley in terms on the "western-bias" or lack thereof. I think it might really benefit a West Region team to travel to a "baseball destination" for 4-5 days and pile up games vs quality opponents. It IS expensive but most cold-weather schools do this every year and make it work.

Some of the more established better supported schools in the West do travel.  It is the Arizona tournament.

SCIAC schools do get travel, but the ASC, SCAC and the NWC schools have very few teams come to Texas or the Northwest in most years, especially since Marietta has stopped coming.

I want to see if Illinois Wesleyan continues to come to Mississippi to play mid-season teams.

IWU has been doing this since at least 2002, and Coach Martel is a creature of habit.  He feels it is a great preparation tool entering conference play, and it has served the Titans well over the years.  As long as Coach Martel is at the helm, I cannot see this changing.

Trying to weigh performance vs. competition, the most surprising development of the new season is the performance of the IWU pitching staff.  Not only do they lead the league in ERA (2.56 vs. next closest at 2.94), but they have an astounding strikeout to walk ratio of 91-16.

Limiting walks is a very large part of limiting runs, and they are currently only allowing a little over 1 walk per game.  This is by far the least in the league, even though in most instances they have played 1 or 2 more games than most teams in the league.  If this continues, I expect IWU to win the conference pretty easily.

All that being said, the next 9 games are against the next top 3 in the standings, so this seems to be when the conference season really begins for them.

Very interesting the way Coach Johnson is getting a large number of transfers.  Getting guys with collegiate experience will definitely help North Park get immediate production from their newcomers.

Is Coach Johnson targeting these players or are they seeking out North Park?

Macalester's Mitch Glasser (39th round, White Sox) and Amherst's Kevin Heller (40th round, Red Sox) were among draftees not signed by the deadline.

Seniors are not subject to the signing deadline.  These players are still eligible to sign.

Because of the scoring methodology, this year the CCIW may have done about as well as it possibly could in the Directors' Cup.  They include many sports that no CCIW school fields teams in, schools count only their 9 best teams for each gender (does any CCIW school field more than that? IWU has 9 for each gender; some NESCAC and other schools have 13+), and the scoring is equal for every sport (IWU's national title in women's basketball - 420? schools - receives the same 100 points that whoever won skiing, fencing, or rifle - 30? schools - received.  It is no surprise that the Cup is always won by one of the NESCAC schools (usually Williams; this year Middlebury).  Rather surprising is that a WIAC school UWW) managed to make #5.

Budget counts heavily for the Directors' Cup.  NESCAC schools finished #1 Middlebury, #3 Williams, #4 Amherst, #7 Tufts; WashU finished #2.

IWU has managed to finish in the top 25 every year since 2008, coming in 5th in 2010.

I don't want to create an issue, but I feel the posts suggesting Maxwell was drafted in the 2nd round because the A's can pound him to sign cheap with the new CBA are not being totally  fair to the A's or Maxwell.
No one gets drafted in the top of the 2nd round unless they have huge talent and project to get much, much better.
The A's do a very good job of scouting and projecting.  They trade away a lot of those players eventually, but most of their top picks do very well in Milb and eventually reach MLB.
The A's have a draft budget of just under $8,500,000 and the #62 draft pick slots for $832,200.
Is the suggestion the A's will crunch the #62 pick because he is D3 and won't want to return to school?
Under the new CBA, the A's have to sign Maxwell or they lose the $832,000.
That and his ability to return to school provide him decent leverage, also, as I understand the new CBA. Unless they believe they could get him to sign for something in the range of $300,000, the amount they save on that slot does not, in my view, translate to provide a whole lot of upside to spread, meaningfully, in trying to sign their top 3 choices for too much above slot.
Based on the last several years of following the A's drafts, they get high quality talent with their first picks.
For me, #62 shows the A's like him a lot and probably used the success in his Summer Wood bat league last year as an important tool for evaluation

There is very little upside for Maxwell to return to school, therefore, I don't think there is much leverage in there.  He is a D3 kid who had a monster year and was drafted at the top of the 2nd round.  Is there anyone in the world that thinks he is going to turn down an offer of say $750k (a situation in which the A's save 82k to spend on other players) and go back to school?

My comment wasn't a knock on Maxwell.  He is a great player.  My comment was simply my opinion of the situation.

Bruce Maxwell drafted at #62 to the Oakland A's. 

This might be crazy, but would Luke Johnson entertain the idea of going there?