That’s right. The next milestone on the way to honest to goodness baseball is upon us. The truck has been loaded with gear, and is on its way to Florida!
I know I probably ask this every year, but I still don’t have a good answer. Why does there need to be a truck? I know that these days the Sox have turned it into an even, and good for them for doing so. But, do they really need the actual vehicle?
According to the Sox, there are 20,400 baseballs on their way to Florida. I assume those are 840 clean fresh cases of balls? They aren’t leftover batting practice balls from the 2015 season, are they? If so, why are they in Fenway to begin with? Why have 840 cases delivered from Rawlings to a place where they’re not needed? Why not just have them go directly to Fenway South? After all, some players are there now. Don’t they need some balls? Did they have to bring their own? So, why not store the baseballs where they’re needed? Even if they’re actually using leftover 2015 baseballs, what about the ones used last Spring? Can’t they just stay in Florida to be used this year? How about bats? The Sox loaded 1100 of them onto the truck. Don’t players get a new shipment of bats every few weeks? Can’t they just have them delivered to Florida? Or batting gloves. The Sox loaded 200 of them to be on their way. Are they used gloves from last year? Are they recycling the same batting helmets from the 2015 season? Aren’t they new? Why are they sitting in the wrong location all winter?
It’s really confusing to me.
But, whatever the reason, the truck is on its way.
Check.
We’ve had the end to the Section 36 Scavenger Hunt. Now we’ve had truck day. Official Pitcher and Catcher reporting day is almost here. Then there will be workouts. On green grass. Then games. Then, we get to see real stuff!
Sure, there’s the garbage of actual Spring Training in the way. But it’s always nice to know progress is being made. We’re going to start to see how things will sort themselves out. Who’s going to fill out the rotation? Where are people going to work themselves into the line-up? How is the team going to look on Opening Day? It’s going to be a lot of fun.
And it all started today.
Do they staff the Spring Training facilities when the teams aren't occupying them? If not, then it might make sense to have everything delivered to the team's home station where there is already equipment staff on-hand to deal with it. If you ship all your stuff directly to the Spring Training facility you have to pay someone to be there to receive orders, put the stuff on shelves, secure the inventory, and otherwise maintain it all. Even hiring one or two people to do all that probably costs much more than it does to hire a truck. And with the way this kind of stuff goes (free agency, last-minute gear) there will probably be additional things you want to ship anyway, so you may still wind up hiring a truck even if you staff the Spring Training facility all year.
ReplyDeleteInteresting point about staffing. I know there's a Red Sox GCL team there during the summer. And, I thought I'd heard about players going there over the winter for workouts or other such activities. But, I can't be sure.
ReplyDelete