Posted on 09/01/2014 1:19:40 PM PDT by gusopol3
1 out vs. Braves 2 outs
If you want some technical reading, pick up ESPN the magazine.I have finally pieced together what OPS and WHIP are, but I have no idea what the vaunted WAR is. Plus RBI is a practically valueless statistic, so they say.
It’s easier to go deep into games when the umps call the top 8 inches of the strike zone. Also a 4 man rotation helps accumulate wins and losses.
Speaking of knucklers, look at the innings pitched and era of Wilbur Wood in the early-mid 70s.
Freegards
The WS Dodgers of the 70s had a 5 man rotation (hooten, T. John/Welch, Sutton, Rhoden and Rau). The first four all had been 20 game winners. It does help when you win more games!
Yeah, computers wrecked baseball stats.
I worked in the college sports business. It is incredible the stats they have to keep. It is so complicated that they have a hard time hiring work study kids to score games anymore.
You want to make a small fortune? Learn how to score collegiate volleyball. You will never be unemployed.
And yet the Philadelphia Phailures are still 15 games back in their division.
Your first sentence says a lot, but offense is so far down now, they’re probably thinking of shrinking the strike zone or lowering the mound . I wonder whether Morneau or anybody else in NL will be able to keep BA >.300, or if we’ll have another ‘68 when Yaz won AL batting title at .299.
drives me nuts too.
And before anyone pipes in, plenty of pitchers through smoking hard in the 70s so its not like guys today throw harder.
They’d been selling out in Philly so many years, I hadn’t been to a game in 7 or 8 seasons. By that time, fan held radios had disappeared from the stands , but they still sold souvenir programs with the line up inserts so you could keep score. This trip, about a month ago, those had disappeared and no one was keeping score. The biggest interest grabber was to see if the cameraman prowling the stands had put you up on the scoreboard between innings.
Hoping against hope the won’t go to 20 below 3 years after winning 100+; but look at the Bosox.
When I first started dating my wife, her Dad would still listen to the games on the radio and keep score.
I know how to do it...I just never did. But he said it helped him understand what was going on better.
It’s a piece of America we’ve lost. No need to keep score...the big electronic scoreboards and your smartphone feeds me what I need to know.
And that’s why the legion game down the street is fun to watch.
Except Aroldis Chapman; he’s averaging over 100 mph when he throws his fastball. There was an article about a no hitter Doc Ellis pitched in the 70’s I believe. He was on LSD he’d consumed before the game, walked 8 but completed the no hitter.
Wood pitched 400 innings a year. I understand that 40 years ago there were 4 man rotations be, so a starter had 8 extra starts per season. The 5 man rotation decreases 20 game winners, and ensures that no vBulletin one will ever win 30 again. What I don’t understand is the pitch count. I never remember Gibson, Seaver or Carlton on pitch counts. I guess that relievers are so specialized now that a starter just has to go six or seven.
I remember going to Connie Mack as a kid, sitting high up in the old wooden grandstand, listening to By Saam on a transistor radio. My older brother always gave the kids outside the stadium a couple bucks to “watch” his car. I remember Richie Allen hitting Ballantine blasts over the Coca Cola sign, and Johnny Callison gunning down runners at third from the right field corner. That stadium was a dump in the heart of the ghetto, but it was a palace to a ten year old who lived and died with the Phils!
“I remember going to Connie Mack as a kid, sitting high up in the old wooden grandstand, listening to By Saam on a transistor radio. My older brother always gave the kids outside the stadium a couple bucks to “watch” his car. I remember Richie Allen hitting Ballantine blasts over the Coca Cola sign, and Johnny Callison gunning down runners at third from the right field corner. That stadium was a dump in the heart of the ghetto, but it was a palace to a ten year old who lived and died with the Phils!”
That is such a cool baseball memory.
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In those days night games started at 8 PM, too; by the time you walked in off the street, the lights had the field lit up like a jewel.
Lack of offense is a couple of things happening at the same time, in my opinion. General lack of any sort of shortening up on two strikes, not caring about striking out a million times a year. Hitters see pitchers less in game. Hitters usually only see the starter 3 times through the lineup and the rest they are seeing once per game. Relief velocity is waaay up the last 10 years. Advanced defensive metrics allow managers to play the %s with shifts, it supposedly works despite the outlier hit that would have been a routine out if no shift would have been on.
Freegards
And you could smell the hotdogs from six blocks away. The beer was cold and the peanuts warm and salty. ... Yup, the good old days.
That’s true! Watching them on the old black and white RCA Victor was never the same after that. The grass was so green, and now I laugh at the thought of the ALPO sign!
1971, 334 IP, 1.91 ERA
1972, 376 IP, 2.52 ERA
1973, 359 IP, 3.46 ERA
1974, 320 IP, 3.60 ERA
Yup, lefty knuckler Wilbur Wood had one heck of a run. I think a couple of those years he was doing stuff like starting both games of doubleheaders.
Freegards
Almost 50 years later I am still a diehard Phils fan!
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