Someone saying he was Wise’s high school coach — and that would be a strange thing to claim if it weren’t true — says:
I WAS DEWAYNE’S COACH IN HIGH SCHOOL. THIS KID HAS MORE RAW ATHLETIC ABILITY THAN ANYONE I’VE EVER SEEN. HE IS A 5 POINT PLAYER, HE JUST NEED’S AN OPPORTUNITY TO PLAY EVERYDAY. GARCIA CAN’T HOLD THIS GUY’S JOCK STRAP.
First, there’s no need to SHOUT.
Second, we’ve all seen how great an athlete Mr. Wise is. Anyone who saw his triple the other day knows that. The problem is that he can’t really hit and thus isn’t really a baseball player.
There’s a reason that “toolsy” has become a pejorative term among the stathead set; we’ve all seen numerous “great” prospects flop because they can’t hit anything with any break. Wise has had plenty of chances to show his ability in the minor leagues. And he’s a career .252/.301/.399 minor league hitter. If it wasn’t for his great athleticism he’d be selling shoes by now.
What has a break in it?
Correct. In addition, it would not be surprising for any high school baseball coach who coached a player who reached even the high minors to have “MORE RAW ATHLETIC ABILITY” than anyone else they coached. People constantly fail to make adjustments for how good major leaguers are and how far they are on the end of the distribution. After all, only the smallest fraction of players have enough talent to get as far as Wise. The clearest example of this is all the high school pitchers who play short on their off days because they can hit .450…. against high school pitching. I went to college with Ron Darling, and I seem to remember him being quite the terror with the bat, but that was against Columbia, not the Dodgers. Career ML avg. – .144
1. What is a 5 Point Player?
2. Regardless of whether Garcia can hold Wise’s jock or not, Wise can play neither short or second, so what’s the relevance of that comment?
Presumably, 5 point is the same as 5 tool: hit for power, hit for average, run, field, and throw.
Jlp is probably right. As for the Garcia comment, the last post on the Wise entry had been that he and Garcia were both 25th men.
Hehe – I knew what he meant about the 5 point player, I was just being facetious. But, we all know how well that tends to work online.
Did you know that facetious is the only word in the English language that has all five vowels in it, in order? And you could throw in the ‘y’ as well, with facetiously.
I was DeWayne Wise’s supervisor at Rack Room Shoes and let me tell you, in my 17 years at Rack Room nobody could hold his jock when it came to getting a customer to add a pair of penny loafers to his purchase. He was a five point salesman (intro, sit down, compliment, close, multi-shoe purchase).