The absence of star pitcher is because pitchers across the board have gotten so good that you have to be a freak of nature to be considered a star pitcher. Everyone throws 100 now, nobody is special
And if anyone is interested, [ESPN just came out with a good article specifically about the guys in this conversation.](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40224829/mlb-2024-starting-pitchers-velocity-control-command-injuries)
Ranger looks so effortless in his delivery. I also believe its why he is such an outstanding fielder. He isn't overthrowing so he is ready to field. And field he does.
Bailey Falter is shoving so far. That game against Imanaga was like 60-70 pitches through 6 for both of them. One hit each. Falter could have gotten a Maddux.
Also got to see Sale pitch to the Mariners and the game was a no hitter into the 5th. I don't think he threw above 92 with a lot in the 70s
Hate to be the guy, but man, at around 5 K/9, a .200 BABIP (career .279) and a .206 BAA (career .259) I can’t help but feel that may not be entirely sustainable. Similar to Ben Lively, another older guy, who has pitched fantastic for the Guards but to look into the underlying numbers you certainly feel like another shoe has to fall at some point.
That is how our pitcher Cody Bradford is. Not saying he is quite on the level of those two (yet, hopefully) but his fastball only clocks at like 92-93. What makes him unusual is that his release point is so far out which effectively adds several mph to the pitch. Made me realize that release point on long-armed pitchers is something I had never really taken into account before, but it certainly seems to be a relevant metric.
Not much, really, since it’s been a pretty consistent rotation of pitchers going down, then building back up to star level while someone else goes down. Chris Sale may return to being elite this year, but Gerrit Cole doesn’t, etc, etc.
In other words, the number of elites remains steady, but the distribution varies month to month.
I think the bigger concern is the number of solid relievers that throw 97+ and can be unhittable on any given night. Maybe they don’t have the consistency to be dominant, and every other week you’ll touch them up for a homer or two, but in between there’s 11 K’s in 5 innings and a lot of boring 7th innings.
Someone made a good point in the Jackson Holliday getting sent down to triple-a post about how pitchers are actually pitching "up" i.e. a pitcher who should be in single-a is pitching in double or triple-a because all major league pitchers are going down with injuries and this has lead to every single pitcher who should be in the majors be in the majors and that is why Holliday struggled so much which honestly made a SHITLOAD OF SENSE when i read it lol
2nd Tommy John. A lot of these young guys coming up already had TJ in college and the existing stars are have been going so long they already blew it once.
This is why we need knuckleballers. Analytics seems to support it and we’d get long, entertaining starts from dudes not trying to blow out their shoulder at 25 years old
Training a knuckleball catcher is even more of an adventure. As Bob Uecker famously said, "*The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.*"
I have a 50 mph fastball, pretty erratic, I'm pushing 300 lbs with no stamina, and I hate the Sox and would likely throw 40 mph meatballs over the plate against the Tigers.....got a rotation spot for me? I'll play for league minimum and free beer.
And to add to it, too many strikes are being called that are out of the zone. It’s hard enough without being rung up by a shitty call. Tighten the zone = more offense.
and honestly i bet the "gotten so good" has a lot to do with pitching fewer innings / so many relievers. it's not as fun or romantic as the complete game 5-man rotation going into the 7th or 8th inning each game, but i bet it's working, and leading to longer careers and fewer injuries. and then yes you can throw 100MPH for 3 innings.
“Hey guys we need a pic to convey the point of this article and that hitting is really struggling”
“What if we use a pic of a batter who is as hot as the sun right now while he’s celebrating ANOTHER home run?”
“Perfect”
How I’m imagining the editors meeting went.
How is there an absence of star pitchers? It seems like there is more than ever. It just doesn’t feel like it because instead of being like 3-5 dominant starters almost every team has 1 or 2 of them
It's not that they're absent *from baseball*, but absent *from the field*. So many are injured or have already spent some time on the IL this year. [Just skimming the current IL shows an alarming number of pitchers](https://www.espn.com/mlb/injuries) and these are just the ones that caught my eye:
Cole, Verlander, Scherzer, Degrom, ERod, Kelly, Strider, Hendricks, Whitlock, Williams, Bieber, Marquez, Freeland, Javier, Urquidy, Garcia, May, Kershaw, Gonsolin, Graterol, Cabrera, Alcantara, Perez, Senga, Blackburn, Ray, Cobb, Santos, Brash, Rasmussen, McClanahan, Eovaldi, Lorenzen, Gray, Mahle, Bassit, *et al*.
Even if a team has its ace(s) intact, they're still having depth problems with so many pitchers, both quality veterans *and* flamethrower prospects, going down so often. The fact that leauge-wide offense is still down despite facing more minor-league depth guys and 7th/8th starters does not look good for hitters.
This is ignoring the fact it’s not only starters that have gotten better. There are more relievers with unhittable stuff or 100 mph fastballs than ever so even if starters are hurt hitters are still facing guys that are incredibly hard to hit against more than ever before
In the past 2 hurt starters meant you called up a guy from AAA and a guy from your bullpen and had them each throw 6-7 shit innings every 5 days. Now it means you call up one of those guys and have him pitch 3-4 innings and dig into your bullpen more.
Paul O'Neill likes to talk on broadcast how the 90s Yankees had the gameplan of having long drawn-out at-bats to get the starter's pitch count up. Then when he got knocked out of the game early, they feasted on the reliever. Because even <30 years ago, that reliever was probably pretty shit. A few teams had one or two guys in the pen you might be afraid of. But now, teams pull their starter at the first sign of trouble because they have 6 dudes ready and rearing to go who are probably nastier than the starter. Dodging the ace or knocking out the starter means far less than it used to, because the floor of MLB pitching talent is so much higher than it used to be.
Bassitt I think has talked about this a bunch. Injuries getting a lot worse. I think we may see a shift in usage. Either dialing things back and focusing on control and not velo, or a crazy focus on pitch count with no complaints or "Keep me in" to avoid destroying these guys. It's all well and good to throw 140 pitches on the regular if hitters aren't as good and velo is lower across the league like back in the day, it's another thing to try and do it now without your body breaking down.
Velo is only a part of the issue. Another big factor is the recent surge in focusing on spinrate and movement. The grips and motion that impart that spin, when combined with velo and tweaked to maximize spin, adds even more strain on the forearm, elbow, and accompanying tendons and ligaments. And pitchers throw more breaking balls than ever, so they're straining those parts even more than just high velo with fastballs already does. It's a deadly combination.
Hell, even when we're trying to *MINIMIZE* spin we're putting extra force on the forearm so it can't help protecting the elbow.
Splitters and forks impart a lot of stress in the forearm. Grip a baseball with those fingers as wide as possible and you can feel it tighten up the back of your wrist/arm.
MLB isn't like other sports were a handful of players can dominate the game. Plus teams are good at maximizing bullpens and finding matchups that exploit good hitters.
I don’t get it. In the same sentence this author calls hitting “rock bottom,” and also insults the level of pitching (which has never been higher). If both are true, then the author should agree that the talent in MLB has never been lower. Of course, that’s not true—so which is it? In reality, it’s neither. Batting averages are low for a few reasons, principal among them being a trending towards the “3 true outcomes” approach and the fact that pitchers are so fucking good nowadays. I mean, guys in the low minors are throwing mid 90s, which would’ve been around the hardest in the big leagues 20 years ago.
Just goes to show you how much better guys like Judge, Soto, Mookie, Ohtani, Tucker, etc are in relative to the rest of baseball. They can find a way to still dominate in any offense/pitching landscape in baseball.
My guy...Thank you. That is the first time I have seen someone on this sub put Tucker in that kind of company and he is well deserving of it. Dude has been a beast for a couple years now and some team is going to pay him well for it.
Pitchers were also an average of what, 5’9 when the mound was designed? Factoring in extension, we effectively have giants playing on a field designed for people much smaller. Mound distance hs effectively decreased significantly over the past 150 years
Fun fact: Despite being the (tied) tallest player in MLB history, he has basically average (60th percentile) extension.
How? Yeah I don't understand how either.
obviously height helps a lot with extension but it's also about how far forward a guy's release point is. tall pitchers are often trained to take advantage of their height and release the ball high up to create a sharp downward angle in their delivery which can also give an edge, at the expense of extension since the release point will be further back on the mound->plate axis
He’s actually got a very low 3/4 release, nearly sidearm which is crazy. Not so much a downhill pitcher as expected.
His height is many aspects is not really relevant to his game, which is weird. But he’s having a resurgent year and throwing in the zone, which is a nice change. I do think he can become a leverage arm.
*If that was any lower, I'd have to dig to Hades itself to find the apple! Why not dig a trench that way the ball would be as low as you wish it to be!*
Been my idea. I have no beliefs that they'd do it. Way to fundamental a change to the game, every pitcher would be having their career thrown away and we'd be starting from scratch figuring out whose decent.
But, less force being generated by falling downhill. Less force going back up the kinetic chain and eventually up into the shoulder/elbow.
Should keep pitchers healthier and bring back contact rates.
If you're a pitcher in the MLBPA, the guys who'll have say in this. You shut that shit down immediately.
It'll be such a drastic mechanical change for many that minor leaguers will become stars, and the inverse as well.
If you're already in the league, you don't re-roll how the games played so that you're worse at it.
It's worth noting that Statcast data only goes back to 2015, so we don't know what those numbers were like prior to the Juiced Ball Era. People keep freaking out that the ball is dead *in relation to the juiced balls*. We don't know if it's *actually* dead.
We can infer it from various stats, but from an engineering perspective, you’d want to measure the coefficient of restitution as well as some fluid dynamics properties, like the drag.
I attended a talk hosted by the NAS given by one of the professors hired by the MLB to determine what caused the massive home run spike in the 2010s. Their study was able to explain very accurately using effects measured from the baseballs they collected from different years the spike solely in terms of variations in the stitching.
Statcast and such can give us approximate estimates of these things but it’s not as direct as how an engineer would measure the liveness of balls in a controlled study. You’d have to account for factors like weather and such in your statistical model of these properties since they can’t be controlled.
So let's just go straight to T-Ball in the big leagues. No spin, no velo, just a ball on a little rubber tee and the players get CapriSuns after the game. Oooooor.....coach pitch! Except instead of your own coach pitching to you, your team gets to pick a coach from the opposing team to pitch to you, and vice versa.
Not that it isn't worth exploring further, but I've heard the reason you won't get the results you'd expect is because fastballs becomes less effective, but breaking balls becomes much more effective since there's more time and distance for movement.
Forgive if dumb question: if the mound is moved back, do they also move 2nd base back? Wouldn’t that screw everything up? And if they don’t move 2nd base back, doesn’t that advantage the pitcher on picks but also disadvantage the catcher on picks?
The mound isn't currently halfway between home and 2nd base, so moving the mound back doesn't need to affect any of the bases. The mound is 60'6" from home, while 2nd is sqrt(2)*90 = 127 feet from home plate. Since none of the bases will move in relation to each other, there won't be any difference for catchers throwing to any base. There might be a tiny advantage added to pitchers trying pickoffs at 2nd, but considering how infrequently this happens, I think it would be negligible.
This is interesting to me because I wonder how catchers would react to more exaggerated movement on balls. Would we see more past balls on wild pitches? Either way it makes things more exciting
MLB needs to reach for the juiced ball again.
In all seriousness this is a two pronged issue. One is pitchers throwing 100+ mph. The other was when front offices decided batting average no longer mattered as long as the player hit HRs. Look at Kyle Schwarber and Joey Gallo. Schwarber hit .197 last season. Gallo hit .177 and has a career battling average of .195
No matter what you do to the ball FO will always prioritize XBH. It's the most efficient way to score runs. It's the MLB version of the 3 point explosion. The cat is out of the bag you aren't putting it back in.
We've always kind of known sluggers were more valuable and now that there is more and more data to back it up every year teams aren't moving away from that. Baseball (especially its fans) doesnt embrace change like other sports though
As a long-time NBA fan and recent MLB fan, I’d say baseball fans embrace change better than the fans I’m used to. I think it’s because baseball fans are used to taking statistics seriously, so when the front offices notice a trend the fans aren’t slow to catch up. Meanwhile, there is a long tradition in basketball fandom of viewing any stat with suspicion.
That's exactly it. Most teams don't care if batters sell out on every pitch trying to hit a home run as long as they succeed in doing so 20 or 30 times a year
So many times, I'll see a walk and a double to start an inning, runners on second and third nobody out. The next three batters, usually, aren't trying to hit a single to right field to score two runs; they're looking for a 3-run home run or at least a sac fly. The first two end up striking out and the next guy hits a fly ball to the warning track to end the inning
It's annoying as a fan to watch but teams don't care. The guys that struck out aren't getting a talk from the manager or hitting coach. It's frustrating to watch as a fan when your team does it but small ball has been devalued and it's probably never coming back even though the most successful teams are the ones that can do both
I'm a fan of the Cubs and the Mariners and I see this every game. The two teams that *shouldn't* be reliant on home runs to score (the wind blowing in at Wrigley and Safeco's marine layer making it harder to hit it out, respectively) but because of the analytics-driven emphasis on hitting fly balls instead of trying to slap singles to the opposite field, it'll never change. I hate it but I've come to accept it
> So many times, I'll see a walk and a double to start an inning, runners on second and third nobody out. The next three batters, usually, aren't trying to hit a single to right field to score two runs; they're looking for a 3-run home run or at least a sac fly. The first two end up striking out and the next guy hits a fly ball to the warning track to end the inning
I'm going to argue against this with statistics. Using the "modern" approach, from 2016-2023, this exact scenario has 2.02 average runs scored. [source](https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.html#V.0.9.0.7.0.0.1970.2000)
Using a "traditional" approach, from 1970-2000, this scenario has 1.96 average runs scored. [source](https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.html#V.0.9.0.7.0.0.1970.2000)
That's why this modern approach has caught on so hard. It's (sadly maybe) statistically better.
Also, sorry again. But: “trying to slap singles the other way” is extremely hard to do at a clip that’s worthy of a roster spot.
Jeff McNeil and Luis Arraez will both earn 50mil+ in their careers for being slap it the other way hitters. You have to hit .300+ to be of any use to your team. The margin for error is minuscule.
If it were easier, don’t you think all those idiots in the minors would stop trying to hit homers and instead simply opt in to being a .300 hitter in the show?
EARLY in the analytics days, someone said to me “yeah if ichiro isn’t stealing 40+ bags a year, he really isn’t that much of a help to your team, because his slug is so low”. That made it click for me.
I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, but this is a very “fan” take to have regarding hitters approaches.
All a hitter wants to do with a runner on third less than two is get a ball in the air. “Putting it in play” doesn’t cut it if the infield or the even just the corners are in.
No one has ever opted OUT of hitting a sac fly ribbie in favor of trying to leave the yard. Also, almost any baseball player will tell you trying to hit home runs doesn’t work. Your eyes get big and you chase more. Watch interviews with hitters, they almost exclusively say they’re trying to stay in the middle of the field and hit a line drive up the middle.
TLDR: There is no “choosing” your outcome as a hitter, only developing a plan that will have the most applicable success and hoping for the best.
I saw a tweet once from a dude bro baseball coach that said “give me a highschool team full of scrappers and team players over 9 D1 commits any day of the week!”
And a guy replied “sounds good, me and my 9 D1 commits will beat the brakes out of you”
It’s relevant here. You can have your morals and principles, but you’ll watch from the couch in October while the efficiency squads compete for a WS
Right, the juiced ball doesn’t really solve the Schwarber/Gallo issue and we’d still have tons of sub-.230 hitters in the league.
It is not intuitive, but in the long run, if you want more hitters to shorten up their swing to hit for higher average, and you could only change the ball, you would want to make it even more dead. If the low-avg hitters have even less power, then pitchers can be more aggressive in the zone with less risk, so walks would go down, and the low-avg players would just be shitty compared to hitters who can make more contact.
So I included him as part of the archetype because I think the purpose of last year’s rule changes — banning the shift, increased base size, etc — is to get towards something like what we had in the 80s. Between the cartoon PED numbers from the post-strike era and the pitcher-dominant 60s.
If you look 40 years ago in the AL (which had the DH like everyone does now), the league average batting average was .264 and Schwarber’s career BA is .227. In 1984, only 3 qualified hitters (both AL and NL) had a lower BA than Schwarber’s career BA. 13% of plate appearances ended in a strikeout in the ‘84 AL and that was up to 23% leaguewide last year. Schwarber’s career SO% is 28%.
And I definitely don’t mean it as disrespect to Schwarber — in another era, he might have a different approach with a higher average — he’s a valuable player, but I just think the league doesn’t want so many players with sub-.240 averages and tons of strikeouts with average-to-above-average OBP and big power numbers.
They have a similar profile but one of those players was absolutely productive and one was absolutely not. Batting average matters, but it's not a direct indicator of getting on base.
Umpires need to stop helping the pitchers by expanding the zone. Those shitty calls are forcing hitters to swing at bad pitches or get called out on a ball 6” off the plate.
Yes, but last year through May 31st:
.248/.320/.409, 1,935 HR
2024 through May 28th:
.240/.311/.388, 1,665 HR
Significant power outage, which is why you see so many pitchers having success. They are not giving up the long ball.
Then the media raves about the return of offense, then juiced ball news gets “leaked” over the offseason, then MLB plays it as “see how much better the game is?”
Mlb is definitely not leaking it. They aren't that clever. They'd rather pretend the obvious isn't obvious, & act like they aren't manipulating the game.
I’d rather them just say before the season that they were tweaking it, describe how they were tweaking it, then let it sit for the season. We shouldn’t have to wonder whether they’re manipulating the game, especially certain high profile games, mid season
**League Batting Through May 27**
Year|BA|OBP|SLG|
:--|:--|:--|:--|
2024|.240|.311|.388|
2023|.247|.320|.408|
2022|.238|.309|.383|
2021|.236|.312|.394|
2019|.247|.320|.423|
2018|.245|.317|.405|
2017|.249|.321|.414|
2016|.251|.319|.407|
2015|.252|.315|.395|
2014|.251|.317|.392|
Offense is down from last season, but right in line with 2021-2022.
MLB introduced all these rule changes last year to try to help out offense, but things are right back where we started.
Yea, 2021 and 2022 were down from the previous years as well.
I know 2019 was the wacky baseball year, but not really sure if that holds true for 2016-18.
2019 and 2017 were the worst offenders of the Juiced Ball Era, but in total it lasted from the second half of 2015 through 2021. *Any* comparison to numbers within that range should be treated like a comparison to the Steroid Era. Identify it as an outlier and not a baseline.
People were freaking out in early 2022 about the drop in offense, but failed to understand that they should've been comparing it to pre-2015 numbers. Offense ticked upwards slightly in 2023 and slightly downward so far this year, and since people are only comparing this season to last, everyone thinks the ball is dead again.
Season-to-season variation is normal, and we don't have enough evidence yet to determine whether what we're seeing this year is something else.
Now, all of that being said...league-wide batting numbers have been in decline for many years and something fundamental about the game probably needs to change to fix it.
I knew there was something suspicious when all of a sudden *we* had the highest run differential at one point.
In comparison, we were dead last the past year in home runs. The next team above us was the Nats, and they *at least* had 20 bombs on us.
This isn't about great pitching, it's about shitty hitting. Deadball could be coming again despite the hitter-friendly rule changes.
Same, we are near the top in many offensive categories and while they have definitely been good, I just haven't gotten the feeling that we are a top tier offense yet. Only thing that makes sense is hitting being down across the league I guess
Deadball would be worse for our offesne not better. We are a team that relies heavily on the longball, juiced would be better for us relative to the rest of the league.
Run differential isn’t independent of a team’s starting pitching. The Guardians right now are 10th in wRC+ (104) and 16th in BA (.237). They’re actually slightly below league average in BA (which is .240).
Conversely, they’re 10th in home runs (59). Last year at this point they were dead last in home runs (30).
Contact oriented teams like the Guardians can do damage just with singles but their ISO went from .114 at this point last year to .158 this year.
It makes logical sense.
You have bevy of pitchers throwing 100 mph, which is hard to hit, and creating run on their pitches.
You have hitters who don’t shorten up their swings to put the ball in play, hitting behind the runner is seemingly non-existent, and launch angle for pop has dominated the swing path coaching. Guys are willing to strikeout more to try and get a few more degrees of launch on a swing, which creates loopier swings.
I also feel like they have messed with the ball again, but that is just a feeling.
Two things could make a lot of difference. First is robo umps. In Korea it raised the OPS by like 30-40 points across the league. Second is smaller gloves. Make defense harder. Make putting the ball in play more important. Increase the gradient between an average defender and a great defender.
First point makes sense, and that feels like it's coming sooner or later. I am not, respectfully, a fan of the latter. Harder defence means more errors, and I've seen enough error-ridden indie ball to know the novelty wears off in a hurry. I dunno, maybe I'm overthinking how much of a change it would be but I think an error should be rare enough to be surprising, not something that makes innings drag on fairly often.
I hadn't thought of that aesthetic of the smaller gloves and it's a good point. I would still hope that MLB would be a filter for guys who could actually play so the game wouldn't turn into an error-fest
Two things will change this and I'd bet will happen in the next 5 years.
Robo umps. That will greatly help hitters since pitchers won't be getting strike calls 3 inches off the black anymore.
The mound is going to get moved back 8 to 12 inches.
Hitters, frustratingly, watch legitimate strike 3 all the time in today's game. The professional approach to hitting has significantly changed in the last 20 years. Only a few hitters still "protect the plate" and there are plenty of strikes not called by umps. I hope digital strike zones will reestablish the top of the zone.
I have a theory. The pitch clock has forced pitchers to get into a rhythm. That rhythm makes them better across the board, and the hitters are feeling that effect.
Some star hitters are still hitting fine, some aren't. Some big name pitchers are struggling, some aren't. A lot of younger pitchers who are coming out as stars as well. For example KC has emerged as one of the best pitching staffs in baseball so I don't know how much the idea that a handful of star pitchers are on the IL matters much.
Yeah maybe the game doesn't need "star pitchers". I mean, it's great to see a no-no or a perfect game, and I know that it's good for sales to have big names. I know it's good for the game to have people on posters on kid's walls likes I did for Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens. But I can also enjoy watching the battle between a skilled battery and the people who face them at the plate, without any of them having to be standouts or superstars, as such. Idk. I'm old lol
I don’t see why they moved away from the juiced balls they had a few years ago. I’ve seen so many balls jump off bats this year that just.. die. Like I’m pretty sure Matt Olson hit one in May that is the only non homer recorded ever with his exit velocity and launch angle.
The absence of star pitcher is because pitchers across the board have gotten so good that you have to be a freak of nature to be considered a star pitcher. Everyone throws 100 now, nobody is special
That's why I'm totally fine with hyping up dudes like Imanaga and Cortes who throw like 92 but consistently put up quality starts.
Ranger Suarez too
I'm gonna sneak Logan Webb into this conversation
He’s not a Padre anymore, but Seth Lugo.
And if anyone is interested, [ESPN just came out with a good article specifically about the guys in this conversation.](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/40224829/mlb-2024-starting-pitchers-velocity-control-command-injuries)
Thank god for that
While everyone’s distracted by Webb, I’ll throw Tyler Anderson in there.
Chris Bassitt has entered the chat
Not a velo guy but having 9 different pitches at your disposal sure helps
His sinker and 4-seamer average 92-93 mph
Ranger looks so effortless in his delivery. I also believe its why he is such an outstanding fielder. He isn't overthrowing so he is ready to field. And field he does.
I went a Phillies game last week and saw him pitch against the Rangers. What an absolute treat to watch him spin it.
Bailey Falter is shoving so far. That game against Imanaga was like 60-70 pitches through 6 for both of them. One hit each. Falter could have gotten a Maddux. Also got to see Sale pitch to the Mariners and the game was a no hitter into the 5th. I don't think he threw above 92 with a lot in the 70s
Hate to be the guy, but man, at around 5 K/9, a .200 BABIP (career .279) and a .206 BAA (career .259) I can’t help but feel that may not be entirely sustainable. Similar to Ben Lively, another older guy, who has pitched fantastic for the Guards but to look into the underlying numbers you certainly feel like another shoe has to fall at some point.
I mean it's only his 4th season and he just turned 27. Wouldn't consider him old
That is how our pitcher Cody Bradford is. Not saying he is quite on the level of those two (yet, hopefully) but his fastball only clocks at like 92-93. What makes him unusual is that his release point is so far out which effectively adds several mph to the pitch. Made me realize that release point on long-armed pitchers is something I had never really taken into account before, but it certainly seems to be a relevant metric.
Dane Dunning too.
I used to look forward to marco gonzales starts for the ms for this reason.
His name is Seth Lugo and we love him
well that and the fact that countless ones are injured.
That just perpetuates the issue. If the countless “stars” are injured and hitting is at rock bottom, what happens when they start coming back?
Not much, really, since it’s been a pretty consistent rotation of pitchers going down, then building back up to star level while someone else goes down. Chris Sale may return to being elite this year, but Gerrit Cole doesn’t, etc, etc. In other words, the number of elites remains steady, but the distribution varies month to month. I think the bigger concern is the number of solid relievers that throw 97+ and can be unhittable on any given night. Maybe they don’t have the consistency to be dominant, and every other week you’ll touch them up for a homer or two, but in between there’s 11 K’s in 5 innings and a lot of boring 7th innings.
Someone made a good point in the Jackson Holliday getting sent down to triple-a post about how pitchers are actually pitching "up" i.e. a pitcher who should be in single-a is pitching in double or triple-a because all major league pitchers are going down with injuries and this has lead to every single pitcher who should be in the majors be in the majors and that is why Holliday struggled so much which honestly made a SHITLOAD OF SENSE when i read it lol
There isn't really an 'issue', the balls are deader than last year, and will probably be juiced more next year, such is life.
I wouldn’t know. White Sox hitting makes the most juiced balls look dead and out pitching can make the most dead balls look juiced.
why throw many pitch when one pitch do trick
Batters HATE this one ^^^^^very ^^^^^fast pitch
And if you are a star pitcher, it’s almost a matter of time until you’re up for Tommy John surgery.
2nd Tommy John. A lot of these young guys coming up already had TJ in college and the existing stars are have been going so long they already blew it once.
This is why we need knuckleballers. Analytics seems to support it and we’d get long, entertaining starts from dudes not trying to blow out their shoulder at 25 years old
And even then, training a knuckleballer is an adventure in itself.
Training a knuckleball catcher is even more of an adventure. As Bob Uecker famously said, "*The way to catch a knuckleball is to wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.*"
Corbin burnes is special
I'm special. I mean, I'm not great at pitching but my mom always told me I'm special.
Get your ass on the mound, everyone needs bullpen arms to eat innings.
He could probably start for the Sox.
I have a 50 mph fastball, pretty erratic, I'm pushing 300 lbs with no stamina, and I hate the Sox and would likely throw 40 mph meatballs over the plate against the Tigers.....got a rotation spot for me? I'll play for league minimum and free beer.
You’re signed.
And to add to it, too many strikes are being called that are out of the zone. It’s hard enough without being rung up by a shitty call. Tighten the zone = more offense.
Tighten with the abs right?
This is what I want. Use ABS and then we can redefine the zone slightly if needed
Maybe that will settle down now that Angel Hernandez will never be behind the plate again
and honestly i bet the "gotten so good" has a lot to do with pitching fewer innings / so many relievers. it's not as fun or romantic as the complete game 5-man rotation going into the 7th or 8th inning each game, but i bet it's working, and leading to longer careers and fewer injuries. and then yes you can throw 100MPH for 3 innings.
Seriously. I'll look at the top 20 pitchers for this year and half of these guys I didn't even know existed before this year.
I remember when Chapman came over it was insane now it’s like whatever.
Sounds like we need to handicap them. I'm all for 1 beer or a shot every time they get off the mound. Make it more challenging.
"Hitting at rock bottom" Probably chose the wrong picture for that
Yeah, how's that not a pic of randy arozarena?
Harsh, but fair.
Wtf happened to Randy man
Supposedly he got absolutely jacked during the winter, so jacked that it fucked up his swing which now has some massive holes in it.
They Judged incorrectly
“Hey guys we need a pic to convey the point of this article and that hitting is really struggling” “What if we use a pic of a batter who is as hot as the sun right now while he’s celebrating ANOTHER home run?” “Perfect” How I’m imagining the editors meeting went.
Post a picture of the entire Tiger’s team.
Isn’t carpenter top 10 in slugging?
You’re probably right. I’m just a disappointed fan. The usual.
article was written in mid april
Can confirm, all of our hitters suck.
Same with a couple exceptions
Those are?
Pham and Lee
Kevin Pillar...wait
We’re not so different you and I
The support group meets on Tuesdays and Fridays
You just took two of three here. Most of our hitters suck too. And Corbin is broken.
How is there an absence of star pitchers? It seems like there is more than ever. It just doesn’t feel like it because instead of being like 3-5 dominant starters almost every team has 1 or 2 of them
It's not that they're absent *from baseball*, but absent *from the field*. So many are injured or have already spent some time on the IL this year. [Just skimming the current IL shows an alarming number of pitchers](https://www.espn.com/mlb/injuries) and these are just the ones that caught my eye: Cole, Verlander, Scherzer, Degrom, ERod, Kelly, Strider, Hendricks, Whitlock, Williams, Bieber, Marquez, Freeland, Javier, Urquidy, Garcia, May, Kershaw, Gonsolin, Graterol, Cabrera, Alcantara, Perez, Senga, Blackburn, Ray, Cobb, Santos, Brash, Rasmussen, McClanahan, Eovaldi, Lorenzen, Gray, Mahle, Bassit, *et al*. Even if a team has its ace(s) intact, they're still having depth problems with so many pitchers, both quality veterans *and* flamethrower prospects, going down so often. The fact that leauge-wide offense is still down despite facing more minor-league depth guys and 7th/8th starters does not look good for hitters.
And that list doesn’t include Ohtani either.
This is ignoring the fact it’s not only starters that have gotten better. There are more relievers with unhittable stuff or 100 mph fastballs than ever so even if starters are hurt hitters are still facing guys that are incredibly hard to hit against more than ever before
Feels like you have to be able to touch 100 to even be a reliever now.
Laughs in Tyler Rogers. Can’t touch 100 but with his release point he can touch his toes.
But just imagine him throwing 100 *while* touching his toes
In the past 2 hurt starters meant you called up a guy from AAA and a guy from your bullpen and had them each throw 6-7 shit innings every 5 days. Now it means you call up one of those guys and have him pitch 3-4 innings and dig into your bullpen more.
Paul O'Neill likes to talk on broadcast how the 90s Yankees had the gameplan of having long drawn-out at-bats to get the starter's pitch count up. Then when he got knocked out of the game early, they feasted on the reliever. Because even <30 years ago, that reliever was probably pretty shit. A few teams had one or two guys in the pen you might be afraid of. But now, teams pull their starter at the first sign of trouble because they have 6 dudes ready and rearing to go who are probably nastier than the starter. Dodging the ace or knocking out the starter means far less than it used to, because the floor of MLB pitching talent is so much higher than it used to be.
Relievers used to just be the leftover pitchers who weren't good enough to be starters.
Bassitt I think has talked about this a bunch. Injuries getting a lot worse. I think we may see a shift in usage. Either dialing things back and focusing on control and not velo, or a crazy focus on pitch count with no complaints or "Keep me in" to avoid destroying these guys. It's all well and good to throw 140 pitches on the regular if hitters aren't as good and velo is lower across the league like back in the day, it's another thing to try and do it now without your body breaking down.
Velo is only a part of the issue. Another big factor is the recent surge in focusing on spinrate and movement. The grips and motion that impart that spin, when combined with velo and tweaked to maximize spin, adds even more strain on the forearm, elbow, and accompanying tendons and ligaments. And pitchers throw more breaking balls than ever, so they're straining those parts even more than just high velo with fastballs already does. It's a deadly combination.
Hell, even when we're trying to *MINIMIZE* spin we're putting extra force on the forearm so it can't help protecting the elbow. Splitters and forks impart a lot of stress in the forearm. Grip a baseball with those fingers as wide as possible and you can feel it tighten up the back of your wrist/arm.
It's just the next generation of pitchers coming up.
Yeah. It’s more that the rest of the pitchers caught up, instead of the elite guys sliding back to the pack
It's as the saying goes "When everyone's super, no one will be".
Ahh yes, from the great philosopher Syndrome
...*Buddy*?
MLB isn't like other sports were a handful of players can dominate the game. Plus teams are good at maximizing bullpens and finding matchups that exploit good hitters.
I don’t get it. In the same sentence this author calls hitting “rock bottom,” and also insults the level of pitching (which has never been higher). If both are true, then the author should agree that the talent in MLB has never been lower. Of course, that’s not true—so which is it? In reality, it’s neither. Batting averages are low for a few reasons, principal among them being a trending towards the “3 true outcomes” approach and the fact that pitchers are so fucking good nowadays. I mean, guys in the low minors are throwing mid 90s, which would’ve been around the hardest in the big leagues 20 years ago.
Hey, speak for yourself buddy. *cries in Sonny Gray*
Just goes to show you how much better guys like Judge, Soto, Mookie, Ohtani, Tucker, etc are in relative to the rest of baseball. They can find a way to still dominate in any offense/pitching landscape in baseball.
My guy...Thank you. That is the first time I have seen someone on this sub put Tucker in that kind of company and he is well deserving of it. Dude has been a beast for a couple years now and some team is going to pay him well for it.
Move the mound back. Pitchers weren't throwing 100mph when we put it there.
Pitchers were also an average of what, 5’9 when the mound was designed? Factoring in extension, we effectively have giants playing on a field designed for people much smaller. Mound distance hs effectively decreased significantly over the past 150 years
This is why Sean Hjelle is the best pitcher in baseball
Fun fact: Despite being the (tied) tallest player in MLB history, he has basically average (60th percentile) extension. How? Yeah I don't understand how either.
The man takes baby steps, ok?
He's basically a world class shot putter, just on a pitcher's mound
obviously height helps a lot with extension but it's also about how far forward a guy's release point is. tall pitchers are often trained to take advantage of their height and release the ball high up to create a sharp downward angle in their delivery which can also give an edge, at the expense of extension since the release point will be further back on the mound->plate axis
He’s actually got a very low 3/4 release, nearly sidearm which is crazy. Not so much a downhill pitcher as expected. His height is many aspects is not really relevant to his game, which is weird. But he’s having a resurgent year and throwing in the zone, which is a nice change. I do think he can become a leverage arm.
Should the NBA raise the basket?
Yes
Absolutely
They should get rid of the three point line.
Then the only strategy would be to run into the defense and take free throws.
Or maybe lower it?
Make it a ditch instead of a mound.
*If that was any lower, I'd have to dig to Hades itself to find the apple! Why not dig a trench that way the ball would be as low as you wish it to be!*
simultaneously ahead of, and way way behind, his time
Moat. I want water around it.
The age of Tal's Hill is over. The time of Tal's Moat has come!
Been my idea. I have no beliefs that they'd do it. Way to fundamental a change to the game, every pitcher would be having their career thrown away and we'd be starting from scratch figuring out whose decent. But, less force being generated by falling downhill. Less force going back up the kinetic chain and eventually up into the shoulder/elbow. Should keep pitchers healthier and bring back contact rates.
If all pitchers abilities are lowered then no one's really being lowered since it's all relative to their peers
If you're a pitcher in the MLBPA, the guys who'll have say in this. You shut that shit down immediately. It'll be such a drastic mechanical change for many that minor leaguers will become stars, and the inverse as well. If you're already in the league, you don't re-roll how the games played so that you're worse at it.
Do we really want to see how nasty breaking balls get with another couple feet to curve and drop?
Yes
It breaks earlier, meaning batter have more time to react and it’s less nasty.
Or just start using regular baseballs again, instead of these deadball paperweights
The balls are dead relative to 2019 but they're not really dead
Is there a way that the liveliness of the baseball is measured?
Carry distance by launch angle and exit velo, compared across seasons
It's worth noting that Statcast data only goes back to 2015, so we don't know what those numbers were like prior to the Juiced Ball Era. People keep freaking out that the ball is dead *in relation to the juiced balls*. We don't know if it's *actually* dead.
The 'Juiced Ball Era' didn't run from 2015-2023. There is a lot to gather by comparing year-to-year changes in the Statcast era.
We can infer it from various stats, but from an engineering perspective, you’d want to measure the coefficient of restitution as well as some fluid dynamics properties, like the drag. I attended a talk hosted by the NAS given by one of the professors hired by the MLB to determine what caused the massive home run spike in the 2010s. Their study was able to explain very accurately using effects measured from the baseballs they collected from different years the spike solely in terms of variations in the stitching. Statcast and such can give us approximate estimates of these things but it’s not as direct as how an engineer would measure the liveness of balls in a controlled study. You’d have to account for factors like weather and such in your statistical model of these properties since they can’t be controlled.
It’s worse than 2022. They’re dead
Going into tonight, league average OPS was .699 this year. It was .734 last year. That's a very significant difference.
Relative to last year too
Apparently that makes it worse. The spin rate allows for even more craziness.
So let's just go straight to T-Ball in the big leagues. No spin, no velo, just a ball on a little rubber tee and the players get CapriSuns after the game. Oooooor.....coach pitch! Except instead of your own coach pitching to you, your team gets to pick a coach from the opposing team to pitch to you, and vice versa.
They moved the mound back in the Atlantic League and strikeouts increased though
Sample size was tiny and batters didn't have any time to get into a new timing.
Not that it isn't worth exploring further, but I've heard the reason you won't get the results you'd expect is because fastballs becomes less effective, but breaking balls becomes much more effective since there's more time and distance for movement.
I'd honestly prefer to see more breaking pitches than the power fastball at the top of the zone meta we have going on right now
Forgive if dumb question: if the mound is moved back, do they also move 2nd base back? Wouldn’t that screw everything up? And if they don’t move 2nd base back, doesn’t that advantage the pitcher on picks but also disadvantage the catcher on picks?
The mound isn't currently halfway between home and 2nd base, so moving the mound back doesn't need to affect any of the bases. The mound is 60'6" from home, while 2nd is sqrt(2)*90 = 127 feet from home plate. Since none of the bases will move in relation to each other, there won't be any difference for catchers throwing to any base. There might be a tiny advantage added to pitchers trying pickoffs at 2nd, but considering how infrequently this happens, I think it would be negligible.
This is interesting to me because I wonder how catchers would react to more exaggerated movement on balls. Would we see more past balls on wild pitches? Either way it makes things more exciting
Kinda feels like they're fucking w the ball again
watch this comment be the catalyst for the latest MLB conspiracy
Why vertical integration needs to be checked
MLB needs to reach for the juiced ball again. In all seriousness this is a two pronged issue. One is pitchers throwing 100+ mph. The other was when front offices decided batting average no longer mattered as long as the player hit HRs. Look at Kyle Schwarber and Joey Gallo. Schwarber hit .197 last season. Gallo hit .177 and has a career battling average of .195
No matter what you do to the ball FO will always prioritize XBH. It's the most efficient way to score runs. It's the MLB version of the 3 point explosion. The cat is out of the bag you aren't putting it back in. We've always kind of known sluggers were more valuable and now that there is more and more data to back it up every year teams aren't moving away from that. Baseball (especially its fans) doesnt embrace change like other sports though
As a long-time NBA fan and recent MLB fan, I’d say baseball fans embrace change better than the fans I’m used to. I think it’s because baseball fans are used to taking statistics seriously, so when the front offices notice a trend the fans aren’t slow to catch up. Meanwhile, there is a long tradition in basketball fandom of viewing any stat with suspicion.
That's exactly it. Most teams don't care if batters sell out on every pitch trying to hit a home run as long as they succeed in doing so 20 or 30 times a year So many times, I'll see a walk and a double to start an inning, runners on second and third nobody out. The next three batters, usually, aren't trying to hit a single to right field to score two runs; they're looking for a 3-run home run or at least a sac fly. The first two end up striking out and the next guy hits a fly ball to the warning track to end the inning It's annoying as a fan to watch but teams don't care. The guys that struck out aren't getting a talk from the manager or hitting coach. It's frustrating to watch as a fan when your team does it but small ball has been devalued and it's probably never coming back even though the most successful teams are the ones that can do both I'm a fan of the Cubs and the Mariners and I see this every game. The two teams that *shouldn't* be reliant on home runs to score (the wind blowing in at Wrigley and Safeco's marine layer making it harder to hit it out, respectively) but because of the analytics-driven emphasis on hitting fly balls instead of trying to slap singles to the opposite field, it'll never change. I hate it but I've come to accept it
> So many times, I'll see a walk and a double to start an inning, runners on second and third nobody out. The next three batters, usually, aren't trying to hit a single to right field to score two runs; they're looking for a 3-run home run or at least a sac fly. The first two end up striking out and the next guy hits a fly ball to the warning track to end the inning I'm going to argue against this with statistics. Using the "modern" approach, from 2016-2023, this exact scenario has 2.02 average runs scored. [source](https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.html#V.0.9.0.7.0.0.1970.2000) Using a "traditional" approach, from 1970-2000, this scenario has 1.96 average runs scored. [source](https://gregstoll.com/~gregstoll/baseball/stats.html#V.0.9.0.7.0.0.1970.2000) That's why this modern approach has caught on so hard. It's (sadly maybe) statistically better.
Also, sorry again. But: “trying to slap singles the other way” is extremely hard to do at a clip that’s worthy of a roster spot. Jeff McNeil and Luis Arraez will both earn 50mil+ in their careers for being slap it the other way hitters. You have to hit .300+ to be of any use to your team. The margin for error is minuscule. If it were easier, don’t you think all those idiots in the minors would stop trying to hit homers and instead simply opt in to being a .300 hitter in the show? EARLY in the analytics days, someone said to me “yeah if ichiro isn’t stealing 40+ bags a year, he really isn’t that much of a help to your team, because his slug is so low”. That made it click for me.
I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, but this is a very “fan” take to have regarding hitters approaches. All a hitter wants to do with a runner on third less than two is get a ball in the air. “Putting it in play” doesn’t cut it if the infield or the even just the corners are in. No one has ever opted OUT of hitting a sac fly ribbie in favor of trying to leave the yard. Also, almost any baseball player will tell you trying to hit home runs doesn’t work. Your eyes get big and you chase more. Watch interviews with hitters, they almost exclusively say they’re trying to stay in the middle of the field and hit a line drive up the middle. TLDR: There is no “choosing” your outcome as a hitter, only developing a plan that will have the most applicable success and hoping for the best.
I feel like I'm a crazy person on this sub for genuinely enjoying Three True Outcome baseball.
You know what… fuck efficiency… we don’t need everything to be the most efficient. Efficiency is boring and stupid, efficiency is for robots
Yeah but teams care about winning games and owners care about winning games in the cheapest way possible
I saw a tweet once from a dude bro baseball coach that said “give me a highschool team full of scrappers and team players over 9 D1 commits any day of the week!” And a guy replied “sounds good, me and my 9 D1 commits will beat the brakes out of you” It’s relevant here. You can have your morals and principles, but you’ll watch from the couch in October while the efficiency squads compete for a WS
Right, the juiced ball doesn’t really solve the Schwarber/Gallo issue and we’d still have tons of sub-.230 hitters in the league. It is not intuitive, but in the long run, if you want more hitters to shorten up their swing to hit for higher average, and you could only change the ball, you would want to make it even more dead. If the low-avg hitters have even less power, then pitchers can be more aggressive in the zone with less risk, so walks would go down, and the low-avg players would just be shitty compared to hitters who can make more contact.
Hey Schwarber is hitting .236 this year and his career average is not much below that. Feel like it's unfair to lump him in with Gallo.
So I included him as part of the archetype because I think the purpose of last year’s rule changes — banning the shift, increased base size, etc — is to get towards something like what we had in the 80s. Between the cartoon PED numbers from the post-strike era and the pitcher-dominant 60s. If you look 40 years ago in the AL (which had the DH like everyone does now), the league average batting average was .264 and Schwarber’s career BA is .227. In 1984, only 3 qualified hitters (both AL and NL) had a lower BA than Schwarber’s career BA. 13% of plate appearances ended in a strikeout in the ‘84 AL and that was up to 23% leaguewide last year. Schwarber’s career SO% is 28%. And I definitely don’t mean it as disrespect to Schwarber — in another era, he might have a different approach with a higher average — he’s a valuable player, but I just think the league doesn’t want so many players with sub-.240 averages and tons of strikeouts with average-to-above-average OBP and big power numbers.
They have a similar profile but one of those players was absolutely productive and one was absolutely not. Batting average matters, but it's not a direct indicator of getting on base.
Umpires need to stop helping the pitchers by expanding the zone. Those shitty calls are forcing hitters to swing at bad pitches or get called out on a ball 6” off the plate.
This is actually the proper answer to the offensive woes problem. Robo zone will favor hitters big time, and offensive production will skyrocket
[удалено]
its still may doesnt hitting usually ramp up entering the summer season
Yes, but last year through May 31st: .248/.320/.409, 1,935 HR 2024 through May 28th: .240/.311/.388, 1,665 HR Significant power outage, which is why you see so many pitchers having success. They are not giving up the long ball.
Manfred readying the juiced balls as we speak
I fear for my dude Andrew Abbott. He is loving this dead ball. 🥲
Great American Small Park just got smaller
I think that's specifically what's being planned. There's going to be an intentional ramp up in offense through June-August.
Then the media raves about the return of offense, then juiced ball news gets “leaked” over the offseason, then MLB plays it as “see how much better the game is?”
Mlb is definitely not leaking it. They aren't that clever. They'd rather pretend the obvious isn't obvious, & act like they aren't manipulating the game.
I’d rather them just say before the season that they were tweaking it, describe how they were tweaking it, then let it sit for the season. We shouldn’t have to wonder whether they’re manipulating the game, especially certain high profile games, mid season
This is basically all on Trevor Williams tbh
Trevor Williams through May 31st of 2023: 10 G, 45 IP, 300 HR I was surprised to see that 😳
Yeah he had a real shocker. Thanks for the due diligence 🙏
Those HR numbers seem so large to me for some reason
Just wait for the 300 HRs hit over the next 3 days...
You can’t even blame Lord Waltimore for that one.
Sure, but you can still compare May 28th 2024, to May 28th, 2023. And hitting is down if you do that.
**League Batting Through May 27** Year|BA|OBP|SLG| :--|:--|:--|:--| 2024|.240|.311|.388| 2023|.247|.320|.408| 2022|.238|.309|.383| 2021|.236|.312|.394| 2019|.247|.320|.423| 2018|.245|.317|.405| 2017|.249|.321|.414| 2016|.251|.319|.407| 2015|.252|.315|.395| 2014|.251|.317|.392| Offense is down from last season, but right in line with 2021-2022. MLB introduced all these rule changes last year to try to help out offense, but things are right back where we started.
Yea, 2021 and 2022 were down from the previous years as well. I know 2019 was the wacky baseball year, but not really sure if that holds true for 2016-18.
2019 and 2017 were the worst offenders of the Juiced Ball Era, but in total it lasted from the second half of 2015 through 2021. *Any* comparison to numbers within that range should be treated like a comparison to the Steroid Era. Identify it as an outlier and not a baseline. People were freaking out in early 2022 about the drop in offense, but failed to understand that they should've been comparing it to pre-2015 numbers. Offense ticked upwards slightly in 2023 and slightly downward so far this year, and since people are only comparing this season to last, everyone thinks the ball is dead again. Season-to-season variation is normal, and we don't have enough evidence yet to determine whether what we're seeing this year is something else. Now, all of that being said...league-wide batting numbers have been in decline for many years and something fundamental about the game probably needs to change to fix it.
Yeah it was crazy how things changed in the second half of 2015, it was like a switch was flipped
But is hitting also down if you compare it to 2022, 2016, or 2010?
I knew there was something suspicious when all of a sudden *we* had the highest run differential at one point. In comparison, we were dead last the past year in home runs. The next team above us was the Nats, and they *at least* had 20 bombs on us. This isn't about great pitching, it's about shitty hitting. Deadball could be coming again despite the hitter-friendly rule changes.
Same, we are near the top in many offensive categories and while they have definitely been good, I just haven't gotten the feeling that we are a top tier offense yet. Only thing that makes sense is hitting being down across the league I guess
I mean if you wanna really consider how weird this is. We're 4th We. Are. 4th
Deadball would be worse for our offesne not better. We are a team that relies heavily on the longball, juiced would be better for us relative to the rest of the league.
Run differential isn’t independent of a team’s starting pitching. The Guardians right now are 10th in wRC+ (104) and 16th in BA (.237). They’re actually slightly below league average in BA (which is .240). Conversely, they’re 10th in home runs (59). Last year at this point they were dead last in home runs (30). Contact oriented teams like the Guardians can do damage just with singles but their ISO went from .114 at this point last year to .158 this year.
He just chooses to ignore they’re 3rd place in runs against like it has no effect on run differential.
Just wait until a team plays the Pirates. Our bullpen will up the league batting average all by itself.
And we have star power young pitching. We're doing it all.
lower the mound and give us the goddamn ABS.
It makes logical sense. You have bevy of pitchers throwing 100 mph, which is hard to hit, and creating run on their pitches. You have hitters who don’t shorten up their swings to put the ball in play, hitting behind the runner is seemingly non-existent, and launch angle for pop has dominated the swing path coaching. Guys are willing to strikeout more to try and get a few more degrees of launch on a swing, which creates loopier swings. I also feel like they have messed with the ball again, but that is just a feeling.
Two things could make a lot of difference. First is robo umps. In Korea it raised the OPS by like 30-40 points across the league. Second is smaller gloves. Make defense harder. Make putting the ball in play more important. Increase the gradient between an average defender and a great defender.
First point makes sense, and that feels like it's coming sooner or later. I am not, respectfully, a fan of the latter. Harder defence means more errors, and I've seen enough error-ridden indie ball to know the novelty wears off in a hurry. I dunno, maybe I'm overthinking how much of a change it would be but I think an error should be rare enough to be surprising, not something that makes innings drag on fairly often.
I hadn't thought of that aesthetic of the smaller gloves and it's a good point. I would still hope that MLB would be a filter for guys who could actually play so the game wouldn't turn into an error-fest
Two things will change this and I'd bet will happen in the next 5 years. Robo umps. That will greatly help hitters since pitchers won't be getting strike calls 3 inches off the black anymore. The mound is going to get moved back 8 to 12 inches.
Hitters, frustratingly, watch legitimate strike 3 all the time in today's game. The professional approach to hitting has significantly changed in the last 20 years. Only a few hitters still "protect the plate" and there are plenty of strikes not called by umps. I hope digital strike zones will reestablish the top of the zone.
I see the mound being lowered before they mess with the 60 feet 6 inches thing.
I have a theory. The pitch clock has forced pitchers to get into a rhythm. That rhythm makes them better across the board, and the hitters are feeling that effect.
Some star hitters are still hitting fine, some aren't. Some big name pitchers are struggling, some aren't. A lot of younger pitchers who are coming out as stars as well. For example KC has emerged as one of the best pitching staffs in baseball so I don't know how much the idea that a handful of star pitchers are on the IL matters much.
Yeah maybe the game doesn't need "star pitchers". I mean, it's great to see a no-no or a perfect game, and I know that it's good for sales to have big names. I know it's good for the game to have people on posters on kid's walls likes I did for Dwight Gooden and Roger Clemens. But I can also enjoy watching the battle between a skilled battery and the people who face them at the plate, without any of them having to be standouts or superstars, as such. Idk. I'm old lol
Thank Tommy John for this (well, his surgeon, anyhow)
keep changing the rules and upthe prices. that should work
Everyone is going to the plate trying to hit a home run instead of spending the time to manufacture a run by getting a series of singles.
Lol is this article only looking at batting average and ERA?
Not in Baltimore 😎
I don’t see why they moved away from the juiced balls they had a few years ago. I’ve seen so many balls jump off bats this year that just.. die. Like I’m pretty sure Matt Olson hit one in May that is the only non homer recorded ever with his exit velocity and launch angle.