I think this might even out over time. Hitters may level their swings again. The bouncy ball made uppercut swings make a lot more sense. A lot depends too on whether fans accept that a 2-1 game is exciting while a 15-3 game is not.
I want baseball to go back to the 1980’s when you could chop a ball into the ground and make it to second safely after the ball bounced over the third baseman.
Bring back a thin layer of astroturf on top of concrete!
2 Likes
I’m not sure they’ll be able to put the tube back in the toothpaste so to speak. Like, I don’t see pitching staffs just suddenly going back to 5 K/9 by choice when they can get 9 K/9. Sure, more pitchers could pitch to contact and go deeper, but the problem right now is nothing is really forcing them to, and there’s arguably not much advantage to doing it. Nearly every team is flush with a luxury of nasty relievers.
The number of innings pitched by relievers has doubled since the era you’re referencing, and the K/9 rate has increased dramatically. You’d have to couple the ball deadening with something like limiting the number of pitchers who can appear per game or limiting the number of pitchers on active roster (Nate’s idea). I doubt either of those would have any traction, especially the latter due to MLBPA.
Personally, I’d prefer to see a hard cap on the number of substitutions allowed at pitcher. That’s the thing I find maddening about baseball since most teams have a seemingly endless supply of fresh dudes they can always trot out that throw 98 mph carnival balls. That constraint would make pitching to contact necessarily more valuable.
2 Likes
Then you’d have pitchers faking injuries to get around the rules.
Move the fences back to make the outfield larger. Shorten the base paths to incentivize stealing and increase the odds of infield singles. I want less Adam Dunn and more Rickey Henderson.
Huh? How are they going to fake an injury to get around the rule of allowing a maximum of 3 rostered pitchers into the game? It’s a hard maximum. If your #3 guy gets hurt, too fucking bad. You’ll have to use a position player to pitch.
They’d roster a pitcher or two as position players.
“Clubs must designate each of its players as either a pitcher or a position player prior to each player’s first day on the active roster for a given season. That designation will remain in effect for the player, and cannot change, for the remainder of the season and postseason.”
And no, you can’t just roster a pitcher as a position player under my proposed rules. A position player is someone who plays X number of innings in the field or however they phrase it, not “any definition the team wants it to be.” If we’re talking about a system that gets the average number of pitchers per game back to the 1970s and 1980s levels (2.5), then it has to be a hard per game cap. Just capping the total pitchers on active roster at 13, 12, or even 11 isn’t going to do it, because they’ll find some way to shoehorn all of those dudes in there. It’s too tempting now.
I think we’ve got to give this a bit of time to see how it develops. I can foresee faster guys and guys who hit for average taking roster spots from lugs who hit .220 but hit homers. If starters go deeper, the need for relievers will have to decline. Only a total of 24 runs scored in the five early games today. That’s a good sign in my opinion, but again, I think we need to see how this shapes up over time.
weather was cold a few days ago, if dingers are still down when it’s warm (starting to warm up here) then it’s clear
Last year this happened at the Sea Dogs game I attended:
But still only seven starters out of 20 even came out for the sixth inning yesterday. Starts aren’t going to get that much longer as the season continues, managers are just increasingly reluctant to let hitters get a third look at any pitcher (and pretty much never a fourth - best I can tell, only two players yesterday had four PAs against a single pitcher, and they went 2-2 with a homer).
Seems pretty clear that optimal pitching strategy is unlimited relievers all throwing few pitches at max effort.
Don’t see how the trend doesn’t end up with a few unicorns at the top of rotations that pitch multiple innings, and then just rotating in relievers every inning otherwise.
That said, I don’t understand why changing pitchers has to be a 5 minute process. Run them in, give them the ball, and make them throw it.
JUCO game. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a brawl start this way. Sounds like hitter did a bit of taunting while rounding the bases (he got a few game suspension) while pitcher was kicked off his team.
For sure. I’ve always wondered why relievers need a warmup on the mound when they first enter the game – isn’t that what the bullpen is for? What were you doing all that time?
I just finished listening to this week’s PosCast, and Posnanski was just gushing over the new minor league pitch clock. So far it’s shortened games by over half an hour. Like, get that in here yesterday.
EDIT: More like 20 minutes, but point stands.
4 Likes
Do they need MLBPA agreement for stuff like that? I would think so.
How does pitch clock work in practice? How many violations per game? And does it apply to all situations or just bases empty?
14 second clock for bases empty, 18 with runners on. No exceptions or limitations on number of violations from what I can see.
I guess I’m wondering how many violations take place per game on average?