- 4 hours ago
ITL debates the style, energy, and talent level between South American and American baseball.
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00:00All right, Lopez. I'm clearing out. Balls with you up top. What you got?
00:04I think it's a legitimate question, especially after last night.
00:07Is South American baseball better than American baseball?
00:10Okay, we're doing that.
00:11He's heating up!
00:12We're doing that. All right, this is...
00:14It's fair.
00:15This is inspired by Venezuela knocking off the United States of America
00:19in the final of the World Baseball Classic 3-2.
00:22This is what it sounded at the end.
00:26Venezuela, the best in baseball!
00:47Let me breathe.
00:49It doesn't seem loud.
00:51It was a scream.
00:52Just crowd noise.
00:54You hear that noise?
00:55Yep.
00:55That's Jose Altuve.
00:57Screaming in the highway.
00:58It was just Altuve.
00:59By itself.
01:01Speaking of that final strikeout, did you see Daniel Palencia, who was on the mound?
01:05He was crying before he delivered the first pitch.
01:07A lot of guys, a lot of them were.
01:07No, not after.
01:08Oh, before, yes.
01:09Before the first pitch goes, you could see tears kind of like starting to well up there.
01:12I'm like, yo, this means something to this, man.
01:15Yeah, it does.
01:15But I think it's a fair question, and we're not just talking about Venezuela beat the U.S.,
01:19whatever.
01:19I mean, not Venezuela.
01:20What do you mean, whatever?
01:21All right.
01:21In terms of if that's your argument.
01:23See, part of the problem.
01:24Look, man, don't forget, Houston beat Venezuela before the World Baseball Classic started,
01:28so clearly Joe Davis saying the best team in baseball, I don't know, might be the Astros.
01:33South American baseball, the Dominican, Venezuela, Mexico, Puerto Rico, all these places.
01:40I think it's more than a fair question, and last night more was illustrating it.
01:46Well, actually, this whole WBC was more illustrating it than everything.
01:49They are incredibly deep, incredibly talented.
01:52U.S. baseball has an incredible system for baseball,
01:57but a lot of it is system, travel ball.
02:00Yeah, I was like, I wonder how many of the youth sports parents that are listening right now
02:03would agree with the idea that the system is great,
02:05especially when they look at their, when they do their taxes on the back end of the year,
02:09and they go, look at all the money to ask me.
02:11Here's the thing, though.
02:11That's part of it.
02:12They're the ones happily paying all that for travel ball.
02:15Happily is a fun question, but yeah, I got you.
02:17You get my point.
02:18Yep.
02:19It's about mechanics and discipline and not really, you know, playing the game in the streets,
02:24so to speak, and you're out of your neighborhood, and you just go play,
02:29and it's about, you know, private instructors and coaches and all that.
02:34There's a great system in place in the United States.
02:36We saw it with an uber-talented team last night,
02:39but I don't know if this system is better than, makes it, makes it automatically better
02:45than South American baseball in general.
02:47South American baseball, their system is neighborhood ball first,
02:51and then they go to, they have Buscones, which are guys that are scouts, basically,
02:56for the academies.
02:58Then they put them in the academy at like 12 years old.
03:00Because Buscones needs to go find.
03:02Yeah, yeah, they call them Buscones.
03:03So they're finders.
03:04Yes, they're finders.
03:04Look at me, I'm learning Spanish.
03:05You're learning, you and Seth.
03:06And then they go to these academies once they're 16 years old.
03:10And it's not travel ball tournaments, AAU, you know, Pony League, all this other stuff.
03:16It's fundamentals.
03:18It's learning how to steal a base.
03:20It's more actual things that will use you.
03:23And then the last thing that really got me last night that really illustrated it,
03:27they have a passion for this game.
03:29And I'm not just talking about the fans.
03:31You know, we've seen it.
03:33Although the fans, again, the fans were high.
03:36That was the loudest I've heard a crowd sound on TV.
03:39And I recognize, right, there's instances where, you know, depending on how you mic it,
03:43depending on how you run the levels.
03:44But it just, it keeps getting louder, which I would like to take this moment to side swipe
03:49some people, if you don't mind.
03:50Yeah.
03:50David Sampson and Derek Jeter, this is a, hey, you guys suck.
03:54Like, you will pay for your crimes.
03:56They ruined Miami baseball.
03:58There's people in Miami that want to watch baseball and want to enjoy it.
04:01Like that.
04:01Nobody shows up to the Marlins games because they have absolutely torpedoed that team.
04:05Yeah, that's a good point.
04:05That's neither here nor there.
04:06You know, meanwhile, we have, I know parents with eight-year-old kids that have $300 bat
04:13bags.
04:14Yep.
04:14And a $250 glove.
04:16Correct.
04:16And.
04:17I used to work at a sporting goods store.
04:18I saw them.
04:18Yes.
04:19And all the expensive equipment.
04:20And the Oakleys, you know, that match their uniform.
04:24And, you know, the.
04:25Is he doing the back in my day?
04:27We didn't have any of these new frangled things.
04:28I'm talking about what we are seeing.
04:30You just said.
04:31They got the gloves in the back pocket.
04:33You've seen it.
04:33Hanging out.
04:33You've seen it.
04:34Well, the thing that I would, the thing that I would say, right.
04:37Because there's an argument being made on the text line from the 281.
04:40Only one, or sorry, only one of those places in South America.
04:43Fair point.
04:44No, no.
04:44Latin America.
04:45Yeah, Latin America is what you're really getting to.
04:47But then someone else made the point from the 832.
04:50Best pitchers in this team didn't pitch in the championship game, right?
04:53Tarek Schubel doesn't pitch, even though he somehow was still hanging around.
04:57I don't know what's up with that.
04:58Mason Miller doesn't get out there.
05:00Shout out to Mark DeRosa.
05:00That's more of the manager.
05:01Shout out to Mark DeRosa again, who did not cover himself in glory at this World Baseball Classic.
05:06The thing I would say is, one, to that point in particular, I don't think it was pitching that doomed
05:12you.
05:12It was the complete lack of offense.
05:14Well, not complete lack.
05:14250 for the whole.
05:16Lackluster offense up and down for the U.S. all through the tournament,
05:19which I found to be kind of, I don't know, surprising, but also like, you know,
05:25it's quite an indictment of what they were doing.
05:27Though I will say, we were all joking at the front end of this about, oh, look at all the
05:33strenuous ways
05:35that they try and fit people into these different, you know, different lineages
05:38so that they could play for these various teams.
05:40A lot of these teams, although we are pointing to, oh, yeah, this is Israel.
05:44This is, you know, this is Great Britain.
05:46A lot of these dudes are American dudes as well if we are going to classify it in the way
05:49that we want to.
05:50So, we can't just go Team America.
05:51I mean, you can only pick 25.
05:52Right.
05:52We can't just go Team USA and go, that is the only, you know, these are the only U.S.
05:56No, but what I'm saying is, your best 25 did not win and hasn't won since 2017.
06:00Sure.
06:00Your best 25.
06:01Which is the last two.
06:02The ones that you can view.
06:02They were in the final game and they lost by one run in both of those instances.
06:07Again, the question is, Latin American players, Latin American countries,
06:11the other thing is, they feel, they know how to handle pressure better.
06:16They just are all about the, they grow up in it, you know,
06:19and they understand what the crowds do and the environments and all that.
06:23I'm not saying they are.
06:24I think it's a more than fair question.
06:26It seemed like it always been like that, though.
06:28Like, I always had that thought for years, man.
06:30Just even looking at the MLB teams and, you know,
06:34maybe it's a lack of American players that want to play baseball, I'm not sure.
06:38But it seemed like a lot of teams have a lot of Latin Americans or, you know,
06:45Latin American players, type of players.
06:47And it just seemed like they, I don't know,
06:49maybe they have a different passion for baseball.
06:51Yeah.
06:52The thing that I would say is, I don't think that this is a, man,
06:56Latin American baseball is so much better than American baseball.
07:00What I will say, and I will stand on, the style of baseball is so much more fun.
07:06And maybe that is somewhat filtering into what you're talking about here.
07:10I know that you're talking about the actual.
07:11Style is definitely part of it.
07:12But I think that the style,
07:13and maybe that allows them to do some interesting things.
07:16Like, now, I don't know how much this factors into the conversation
07:19where you have the steel that ultimately leads to,
07:22the steel of second base that ultimately leads to Eugenio Suarez
07:25driving in a run that is ultimately the winning run, right?
07:30That is such an incredible steel to the back part of the bag at second.
07:35That is exactly what you need when juxtaposed with whoever's covering second
07:38in that moment.
07:39I can't remember in this moment.
07:40A really bad attempt at a tag.
07:42I don't know if you can extrapolate that out,
07:44but I do feel like sometimes the style and being able to, like,
07:46playing with that passion and that freedom allows them to do, you know,
07:50allows the Latin American players to maybe make some of those plays
07:52a little bit more interesting or a little bit easier compared to,
07:55I don't know.
07:56I absolutely agree.
07:57Yeah, I don't know that I could talk about this qualitatively per se
08:01in that better or worse, but I think for me,
08:05I enjoy watching these Latin American teams a lot more.
08:08And, yes, we can talk about the passion,
08:10but even the style of play I think shows up in a way that's more appealing.
08:13I think those tie together.
08:14You know, the United States, I think it's fair to say they're more rigid.
08:18You know, they're more paint by numbers, power hitting, building the team.
08:24And that's another part of it as well, just knowing that these guys,
08:28they play together all the time too, the Latin American players.
08:33That is something that, remember when we were asking if the U.S. doesn't win,
08:37do they get treated like the men's basketball team will when they don't end up
08:41getting gold, which I already saw some people being like doing the thing
08:44where they go, oh, man, this is an issue with the system,
08:46which, you know, obviously everybody does whenever USA basketball looks a little
08:49shifty, they go, oh, it's the AAU.
08:52I think that you also can bring this back around to, like,
08:57there is something stylistically where kids of the U.S.,
09:01we have fallen in love with the true outcomes and the big swings.
09:04It doesn't feel like there's a more well-rounded appreciation for baseball
09:08or at least the fullness of playing at the highest levels, right?
09:13It seems like because of the gamification of it, as you talk about the way that you
09:17have to get through it, getting yourself, trying to get some level of scholarship
09:19or trying to, you know, obviously play high-level baseball through, you know,
09:22all the travel ball, it does feel like guys are specializing in such a very
09:26particular way, and I don't know if that is the same way in the Latin American
09:31kind of ladder that you're talking about.
09:32It's really not based on everything that I know.
09:34I mean, those academies are, you know, sometimes hundreds of players,
09:38and the mixing and matching and running the bases and how to turn a double.
09:42Not that they don't teach that in travel ball.
09:43All I'm saying is it's intensely that.
09:45And then once you get to the academies, you're 16 years old,
09:48and you're in a baseball academy playing in tournaments with this kind of environment.
09:52They know pressure.
09:54You know, that's the other thing.
09:55Yeah, these American players are playing in pressure circumstances.
09:57Hold on, hold on, because how many times have you heard American players
10:00never seen anything like it this past week?
10:03Never seen anything like it.
10:04Yeah, but that was also the thing that you're hearing from the Venezuelan players.
10:07No, it was not.
10:08No, it was not.
10:09You sound like Reggie don't want to go with your theory.
10:11No, you weren't hearing that from Latin American players.
10:14They play in that all the time.
10:16The Americans, like, wanted it.
10:18They understand the pressure, the Latin American players,
10:22because they grow up in it.
10:24And it's absolutely, I think, a factor as well.
10:27By the way, shout out.
10:29Big time shout out.
10:31I don't know how much this has been mentioned, you know, overall.
10:34Overall, the very first academy built in Venezuela was in 1988, I remember it well,
10:43by one Tau Smith and the Houston Astros.
10:46Houston Astros built the very first baseball academy in Venezuela.
10:50And now look.
10:51Now look.
10:52I think that the Astros got to find a way to claim like a quarter of this championship somehow.
10:57I would like to try and make the argument that they were doing it for Jose Altuve, one.
11:02Two, obviously, the manager is a 25-year Astro, Omar Little.
11:06And also, don't forget that you have on there Javier Bracamonte, I want to make sure I say that, right,
11:13who was also an Astro.
11:14You have all of them factored in into this.
11:16Like, I do feel like.
11:17And these are the grandchildren of the very first Astros baseball academy.
11:20Yeah, I feel like the Astros got to take some level.
11:22Well, don't have to.
11:23But I would.
11:24As a shameless individual, I would take some level of responsibility for the Venezuelan team.
11:30Should we celebrate it?
11:31Oh, yeah.
11:31Should we celebrate it?
11:32I'm going to.
11:33I was happy for them.
11:34I'm personally going to.
11:35At the very least, even if you don't want to celebrate it for the Venezuelan of it all,
11:38you can celebrate a couple of things.
11:40Aaron Judge still stinks in big moments.
11:43Cal Raleigh, AL MVP runner-up and obviously a dude that is in your AL West vision.
11:49Buddy, he was useless.
11:51Did he get any bases?
11:53I don't know.
11:53Did he get on base during this entire tournament?
11:56Cal Raleigh?
11:57Yeah.
11:57Right?
11:57Like, there was some.
11:58I barely heard his name.
11:59Yeah, man.
12:00So, yeah, you could at least do a little bit of schadenfreude even if you're not just straight
12:04up enjoying what Venezuela is.
12:06Somebody said, did the Astros find their next manager?
12:08I mean, if it gets real dicey, maybe.
12:10Because Omar Lopez does feel like he.
12:12Omar Lopez.
12:13Lopez.
12:14I went to the wire somehow.
12:16But Omar Lopez does feel like he's going to be managing Major League Baseball games relatively
12:21soon.
12:22Next season.
12:22You think next season?
12:23Oh, yeah.
12:23All right.
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