The Far East Baseball League, is it fit for purpose?
Posted: Tue Oct 08, 2019 6:43 am
The Far East Baseball League is supposedly the UMEBA's A ball league, the lowest level you can enter the UMEBA ladder. Is it currently the best environment for our rookies and youngsters to join though. There are currently 284 actively playing in the FEBL, 39 of those (including 21 30-somethings) are aged 26 or older. Extend that to 24 or older and you get 113 players, so around 40% of all the players in the league fall in this age bracket. Now with the first ever UMEBA draft due this year we will be dumping a load of teenagers into this setup, how will their development fare when they are constantly coming up against players that have 10-15 years of pro baseball experience and have played in many UMEBA games?
Studies by the leading BBA researcher, Professor Collins, have shown that it does nothing for their confidence or development if they are continually watching 30 somethings hurl 95 mph fast ball past their heads or watching their best pitch vanish over the fences propelled by beefy players who are in their second decade of power development. One of the UMEBA's main problem is an aging population, most of the teams are composed of players who are either very close to 30 or in most cases over-30. This has obviously been a consequence of the UMEBA's main source of players, that being the old worn out BBA players. In theory UMEBA can attempt to tempt the younger element who never made it all the way up the BBA ladder but not many are interested in a distant lower league out in sandy deserts. So it is vitally important that the UMEBA teams do everything they can to develop their own players, and that should include destroying them by pitting them up against gnarled veterans day after day. Some will obviously call for a Rookie League to be added below the FEBL but that IMO would add a lot of unnecessary effort, time and expense. It would be far easier to clean up the FEBL either by a voluntary age cap or a league imposed one. There should really be no need for any players over 23 to be in A ball, above that either you should be attempting the next rung of the ladder in Triple-A or in all honesty considering if baseball is really for them. Hoarding 35 and 36-yr-olds in A ball is destroying the credibility of the FEBL. So wake up UMEBA GM's !! Let's clean up this mess and give our first draftees a clear and confident passage through the leagues all the way to the top ! Your 17-yr-old #1 pick pitcher will thank you that the 36-yr-old ex-BBA slugger will no longer be hitting his 82 mph fast balls 450ft.
Talking of the first ever UMEBA draft, the teams better be breaking out the barbies and tubes of Fosters because of the 398 players that have declared themselves currently eligible for the draft, 394 are young Australians. So we'd better all learn that basic Australian phrase "G'day Sheila, fancy a Fosters?"
Studies by the leading BBA researcher, Professor Collins, have shown that it does nothing for their confidence or development if they are continually watching 30 somethings hurl 95 mph fast ball past their heads or watching their best pitch vanish over the fences propelled by beefy players who are in their second decade of power development. One of the UMEBA's main problem is an aging population, most of the teams are composed of players who are either very close to 30 or in most cases over-30. This has obviously been a consequence of the UMEBA's main source of players, that being the old worn out BBA players. In theory UMEBA can attempt to tempt the younger element who never made it all the way up the BBA ladder but not many are interested in a distant lower league out in sandy deserts. So it is vitally important that the UMEBA teams do everything they can to develop their own players, and that should include destroying them by pitting them up against gnarled veterans day after day. Some will obviously call for a Rookie League to be added below the FEBL but that IMO would add a lot of unnecessary effort, time and expense. It would be far easier to clean up the FEBL either by a voluntary age cap or a league imposed one. There should really be no need for any players over 23 to be in A ball, above that either you should be attempting the next rung of the ladder in Triple-A or in all honesty considering if baseball is really for them. Hoarding 35 and 36-yr-olds in A ball is destroying the credibility of the FEBL. So wake up UMEBA GM's !! Let's clean up this mess and give our first draftees a clear and confident passage through the leagues all the way to the top ! Your 17-yr-old #1 pick pitcher will thank you that the 36-yr-old ex-BBA slugger will no longer be hitting his 82 mph fast balls 450ft.
Talking of the first ever UMEBA draft, the teams better be breaking out the barbies and tubes of Fosters because of the 398 players that have declared themselves currently eligible for the draft, 394 are young Australians. So we'd better all learn that basic Australian phrase "G'day Sheila, fancy a Fosters?"