Hahahahaha
Do we have the Bob Costas Trashtros apology from the Yankees series? Sure, they may have cheated but they’ve made amends and are a great baseball team now. Ten thousand JLaws on that shit.
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They were outside the limits of design, but not outside the limits of performance
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Time for some of that Phillies magic please.
What Verducci said makes no sense. Martin Maldonado needed to borrow a bat from someone, so he decided to get one from [checks notes] Albert Pujols because the specs were “similar to his own.” He’s a professional baseball player and can likely get an unlimited number of bats produced to his exact specification. But also he wanted to honor Pujols? It’s 100% a pure angle shot. It’s the WORLD SERIES. You wouldn’t just start swapping out equipment for stupid made-up reasons unless you thought you were gaining an advantage.
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Again, IIRC… they outlawed certain construction techniques at the same time they set the standardized performance standards. In particular, composite wooden bats. There were also lower overall size restrictions. Also manufacturers had to be pre-approved. The grandpa bats might be now out-of-regulation in these other non-standardized performance areas.
Agreed, it would have been better to phase it in over a short period.
This. It’s his damn job to know this shit. The excuse is simply gibberish.
Not the first time he’s used this bat. It at least explains the Pujols connection though.
There was a period time golfers could anchor the end of the putter handle in their belly. That was outlawed and the practitioners screamed.
OK, I could have looked this up, instead of IIRC incorrectly.
In 2010 they set a barrel size limit of 2,61". Nobody used a bigger barrel in 2009, so zero were grandfathered. Also they set a standards for grain and density, because the newer maple bats were shattering often. Lots of players were grandfathered into that, including Pujols.
Beginning in 2009, all manufacturers were required to adhere to slope-of-grain standards, no matter the wood species.
Also beginning in 2009, all players joining a major-league team’s 40-man roster for the first time were prohibited from using maple bats with density lower than 0.0240 pounds per cubic inch.
Granted, that second rule shouldn’t have made much difference, since the great majority of players in the major leagues were on a 40-man roster prior to 2009, and were grandfathered in with the low-density bats.
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LOL at people calling this cheating.
It’s the Astros. They’ve lost all right to any benefit of the doubt.
(The bat almost certainly didn’t give any advantage, but fuck em)
Safety over style will always get mocked, unfortunately. My mom (who was my little league coach cause she’s the coolest) asked me the other day if I remember chest vests. They were padded vests that protected your chest/ribs that you would wear when batting. A kid getting hit there can be fatal. We all were required to wear one until a certain age when I played. She was asking me because she had just had a conversation with a friend whose grandson wears one now and gets mocked relentlessly because none of the other kids do. It’s no longer mandatory.
Wait what? How old are you? I’ve never heard of those
I’m 33. I think they were required when batting until AA league, which was maybe 10 years old. Then they were optional. My memory on them is a bit fuzzy though, and I had totally forgotten they were a thing until my mom asked me the other day.
I’m 36 and never used them…
Must have just been a thing in my wealthy suburban area. The league was probably worried about litigious lawyer parents that would have bankrupted the league if their little Johnny got hurt.
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I thought that the risk of dying from being hit in the chest with the ball was more likely to occur from a batted ball, rather than a pitch.