Weed out

To 'weed out' is to eliminate something that is unwanted or unworthy

Today's story: Minor league baseball
Explore more: Lesson #602
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Weed out

To “weed out” is to eliminate undesirable things or unqualified people from a competition. The idea is, someone is making a decision. Someone is selecting a few people or a few things out of many. And before making the final decision, they want to eliminate the ones that should not be among the finalists .

One way to use this is with job applicants . I used to work for a large consulting firm . And it was hard to get good people, but sometimes we’d post a job and we’d have dozens of people apply. And we had an HR office, human resources office , that would weed out the candidates that, for whatever reason , should not be part of the final decision-making .

For example, and this never ceased to amaze me , there would people who would just simply not fill out the application correctly. So, if you couldn’t, or if you refused to fill out the application form correctly, then HR weeded you out. Second, there would be applicants who had no relevant experience . Maybe they were good workers, maybe they were good people, but they had no relevant experience. They were not worth our consideration for this job. HR weeded them out too.

So then, we still had a pool of people to choose from , but when we went to do interviews and make the final decision, we weren’t also looking at people with no experience. Those people had been weeded out.

This sounds harsh , but “weed out” is not about identifying the winner; it’s about identifying the definite losers and excluding them from consideration .

And that’s how it is in minor league baseball , too, really any professional sport. It’s a brutal competition . Each major league baseball team might only have five or six spots each year for new, younger players. To fill those five or six spots, they have eight full teams of players at lower levels. And there are more competitive, hungry players coming in every year.

So the coaches and the scouts at the lower levels need to weed out the players that have no chance of ever making it . The sooner you can exclude them, the better for everyone. It’s just reality, not everyone has the talent. Some players would show a lot of promise at age 18, but they never improve. They never realize their potential . Others didn’t have as much potential to begin with. Some get hurt and never recover .

There are tons of reasons why a player would simply not have the potential to make it to the majors. So the teams need to weed out the players that just don’t have any realistic chance of making it to the majors, so that their Triple-A roster, that highest level—they want that team to be full of players worthy of consideration for the majors.

Just like with the job, the process of weeding out players—this is not about picking the ones who will make it. It’s about excluding the ones who don’t belong in the final decision-making.

This is harsh! But it’s life, it happens everywhere. We talked about Wheel of Fortune, the game show . They have tryouts all over the country. Potential contestants send in their videos. Then they often try out in a local competition in their state. Then, the producers weed out the people who just don’t have any chance.

To be on a game show, you have to be good on TV: you have to smile, you have to laugh, you have to get excited , show your energy , you have to be a good clapper. You have to look good clapping your hands —they don’t want boring people on TV. This is entertainment . So they’ll weed out the people who just don’t make good TV.

But there’s talent to playing the game, too. You could be great TV, but if you can’t solve the word puzzle , then that’s not going to work either. So then they’ll weed out the people who are just not good at the game. And then —and then, finally—they invite people to final tryouts in California, and even not all of them will make the game. But they’ll have a pool of qualified people from which they pick the contestants .

They’re not wasting their time on people who don’t know how to play the game. They’re not wasting their time on people who aren’t going to be good on TV. Those people have all been weeded out. The producers, then, have a pool of realistic contestants to choose from.

See you next time!

That’s all for today—remember, these are quicker, easier episodes for you during the late summertime. And on Thursday, we’ll do another one about small town American summers. This is going to be about agricultural fairs , state fairs, county fairs, things like that.

This was lesson 602, so remember, the full lesson is at PlainEnglish.com/602. See you right back here on Thursday.

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Story: Minor league baseball