Adam Wainwright admits grooving a pitch to Derek Jeter

Derek Jeter smacked a double to right field off National League starter Adam Wainwright in the bottom of the first inning of Tuesday night’s MLB All-Star Game at Target Field. Jeter then came around to score on a Mike Trout triple in what became a three-run opening frame for the American League.

Wainwright met with reporters after his one-inning outing and admitted that he purposely gave Jeter a hittable pitch in the shortstop’s final Midsummer Classic. Via Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports …

Waino: “I was gonna give him a couple pipe shots. He deserved it. I didn’t know he was gonna hit a double or I might have changed my mind.”

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) July 16, 2014

There are a couple of major issues here … 1. It defeats the purpose of grooving a pitch to honor a guy if you then acknowledge publicly that you grooved that pitch. 2. However dumb the rule may be — and it is indeed very dumb — winning the All-Star Game means earning homefield advantage for the World Series that same season, and Wainwright’s Cardinals are a year-by-year mainstay in the National League playoff picture.

FOLLOWUP: Adam Wainwright to Erin Andrews: “I didn’t want Derek Jeter to get a hit”

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Did Adam Wainwright take away from Derek Jeter?

This morning Major League Baseball announced a new elite league for high school baseball players who are likely to be drafted. It’s called the Prospect Development Pipeline League. It’ll start next summer and it’ll invite 80 of the best current high school juniors to play in a league in Florida from June through early July, culminating in an All-Star Game during MLB’s All-Star week.

The idea behind the league: to combat the current system in which a couple of pay-to-play, for-profit showcase leagues dominate the pre-draft season. Major League Baseball, schools and a lot of players’ parents have criticized this system because it favors rich kids who can afford to play in them. Major League Baseball is also likely quite keen on having greater control over the training, health and physical monitoring of prospects.

As Jeff Passan notes in his report about this, there will be a component of the program which involves live data-tracking of players during games and drills. Major League Baseball has become increasingly interested in such things but is limited in how much it can do in this regard due to labor agreements. There is no such impediment with high schoolers. Your mileage will vary when it comes to how you feel about that, I presume.

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