There’s still old-school players, but I don’t think you have scouts going out and looking for them. You’re not seeing a premium for speed. But I was just looking at the guy who’s leading the league in stolen bases, and there’s been a massive drop-off on that, so that’ll show you right there how the game has changed.

If you ever doubt the stupidity of this new emphasis, take a modern-day speedster, subtract his caught stealing total from his singles and convert his stolen base total from singles to doubles. Then see what his numbers look like.

This not factoring in a) the disruptive influence on the pitcher of having a very fast player on base, b) the many, many ways speed on the basepaths is vital other than just stolen bases and c) the correlation speed has with good defense.