Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Travelers’ OF not too fond of BP routine
Batting practice soon may be a thing of the past, and according to an article written by Bobby DeMuro on BaseballCensus.com on Monday, Arkansas Travelers outfielder Braden Bishop is OK with that.
Bishop and DeMuro got to know one another during Arizona Fall League play last year and were catching up in late May at Dr Pepper Ballpark in Frisco, Texas. Their conversation turned to hitting, and they started talking about a tweet they both had seen from Jason Ochart, the director of hitting for drivelinebaseball.com.
“I predict that by 2030, onfield BP will be a thing of the past. Teams will hire pitchers [much like an NFL practice squad] to throw off the mound to prepare hitters. The question is, who will be the first team to do it?” Ochart tweeted on May 30.
“Bishop didn’t feel like he was necessarily being best-served by the conventional rounds of 45 foot batting practice that have become ritual about three hours before every game, and Ochart’s tweet became a jumping-off point for us to hypothesize about some of the what-ifs around building a better BP,” DeMuro wrote. “Bishop was beyond ready for change to come to a repetitive ritual that on-field batting practice has become — an exercise of which he’s a part [of] probably 200 days a year, all things considered.”
Bishop went on to describe how he approaches batting practice and how it could change for the better.
“In my pregame routine in the cages, I typically do a couple rounds of underhand flips, and then I like to get it overhand,” Bishop said. “Maybe not so much a full pitch, but something that’s going to really get on me. I don’t like a flat toss from a few feet away. I really need to see something moving with plane, something with life. I want to see something that’s really getting on me and coming downhill, because I feel like the faster I can train, the slower it’ll be when it comes time for the game.
“I can honestly feel it. Maybe not my body so much as my eyes, but when I see something that gets on me that quick, I know that I really have to react quickly to it. And when it’s game time and the mound is another 15 feet away, it really feels like I can see the ball forever before I make a decision. The times when I don’t get that hard front toss, in the game it feels like the guy is releasing it and it’s getting to the glove before I can ever figure out what I’m supposed to do.”
Is this thing on?
Carolina Hurricanes President and General Manager Don Waddell issued a statement Tuesday saying radio broadcaster Chuck Kaiton would not return for the 2018-2019 NHL season.
Kaiton’s departure leaves a glaring problem: There may not be any radio broadcasts of Hurricanes games this season.
Waddell did address the situation in the statement announcing Kaiton’s departure.
“As for the future of our radio broadcasts, we are exploring our options, especially the possibility of airing the audio from our Fox Sports Carolinas television broadcast. John Forslund is one of the top play-by-play men in our sport and we are confident his call will sound terrific on the radio as well.”