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After age 35, Pujols has had a WAR of approximately zero and Bonds had a WAR of approximately 50. 50!
Love it baby.
A not-so-hot take: I don’t give a shit if pro athletes use PEDs. I don’t care if pitchers doctor baseballs (something that’s arguably way more prevalent and beneficial to pitchers than PED use). I care about enjoying what I’m watching. If Albert Pujols was just a pair of pecs holding a baseball bat between them and jacking 100 HRs per season, I would love it.
GOAT
I think the only issue here is safety. The doctored balls can be dangerous, I think that’s a bigger issue than performance. MLB had a player die from being struck by a pitch. It was a century ago but weighs heavy on the culture of baseball.
lol pecs
True. A lot more players are being hit by pitch than in the past.
Seriously though it will never not be bullshit that you get penalized for diving out of the way of getting hit by a pitch and you gotta stand there and wear it if you want to take first base. There should be a hit by pitch zone! How about 3 balls is a walk? Makes no sense the pitchers get an extra mistake. Follow me for more great ideas on how to improve the game.
Honestly, I like the idea of throwing at a player = first base regardless if you hit them or not. And definitely throwing at head = ejection even if you miss.
Though how do you distinguish throwing at a player from pitching and missing inside. It’s not always clear.
Actually, safety doesn’t seem like a big concern to me. The obsession with exit velocity combined with the juiced baseballs (which obviously aren’t as juicy this season) really put pitchers in danger in my opinion. Batters wear helmets. Pitchers don’t. It’s really the pitchers who are in far greater danger I’d say, and MLB is super lucky that none of them got killed in the past few seasons.
This is an interesting point. A factor is the relative frequency of dangerous pitches vs. dangerous batted balls. A ball hit at the proximity of the mound is probably much more dangerous than a pitch, but almost 100% of pitches are in the proximity of the batter but only a small fraction of batted balls (which is already a small fraction of total pitches thrown) is in the proximity of the pitcher. So pitchers are probably “safer” overall, but more likely to experience a severe injury or death.
The real danger to players is a ball to the head/face. Batters are much more protected with a helmet, plus they are expecting the ball and have a chance to turn their face away from a ball.
Pitchers have no protection, plus they are closer to the batter after their follow through and many aren’t even in great fielding position. I do wonder if at some point we’ll start seeing pitchers wear face masks like they do in softball.
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During a recent MLB game, the announcer was pointing out that the pitcher (I don’t remember the teams playing) had a thin, Kevlar plate on the inside of his cap on the side that faces the batter on his follow-through.
At least it’s a start.
Kopech got injured during warmups and LaRussa still sent him out there and despite Kopech laboring didn’t take him out for a little bit and he didn’t get an out and they ended up giving up 4 in the first
thanks for the lost 2 units tony
can’t imagine a pitcher wants to throw wearing a face mask, it’s still pretty rare for a baseball in the face to do damage though that would definitely hurt and take them out of the game as a precaution; but a softball in the face yeah that would take some teeth out at a minimum. as noted pitcher caps are a little different than everyone else’s now
I don’t disagree, some added protection is needed but it’s going to be hard to figure out how to do that and also not impacting pitchers
Jordan Montgomery on the cardinals 25.2 IP–1 run total given up great trade cashman
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