Posted on 02/11/2019 10:07:24 PM PST by TBP
1. The new pitcher needs a few pitches to get used to the mound, where the divots are, how it plays. Every mound is different. But cut it from 8 warmups to 4, perhaps.
2. They have gotten rid of the four-pitch intentional walk. They’ve been waving players to first base for a couple of years now. (They just hold up four fingers.) If I were a hitter, I don’t think I’d like it.
3. No, the pitching distance has been the same since the 1800s. This is tampering with the long-established way the game is played. What you want to do is lower it, as they did after “The Year of the Pitcher” in 1968, when it went from 15 inches to 10. It takes some angle off the ball, reducing the movement a bit, and at any speed, straight is easier to hit.
Lowering the mound works. Drop it from 10 inches to 7, and see what happens.
Not to mention the injury Chien Ming-wang suffered running the bases in San Diego.
I remember watching a game at Dodger Stadium in 1977 or 1978, Tommy Lasorda managing the Dodgers, Sparky Anderson managing the Reds. I had a scorecard (I like to keep score) and I was marking players off when used. I could call a bunch of moves before Lasorda and Andeson made them. when my mother asked how, I showed her my card, and I showed her that I marked who was used, so I knew who was available and what the strategy was.
What people who say “baseball is boring” don’t understand is that it’s a strategy game, much more than any other sport. The DH negates that. How often do you see a pinch-hitter in the AL?
2018 Dodgers: 303 PH AB
2018 Astros: 78 PH AB
Interestingly, baseball didn't get to this point -- where so few balls are put in play -- by accident. It's a natural consequence of analytics ... because computers helped us realize that getting runners on base and moving them around the bases is actually a very inefficient way to score runs.
Build them like the Polo Grounds, old Yankee Stadium, and tiger Stadium, with nice, short, inviting foul lines and a deep centerfield. You have fences for the power hitters, good power alleys to produce lots of doubles (ane therfore men on base), and a place for pitchers where balls can go to die.
Ballparks like that make oyu play a mor einteresting brand of baseball.
Yankee Stadium was not built to be a football field. Taht was not what Col. Ruppert had in mind. The Giants didn’t arrive until many years later.
Prior to building Yankee Stadium, the Yankees shared the Polo Grounds with the baseball Giants. Yankee Stadium was built to take advantage of Babe Ruth.
I have been to ballgames at all three of the ballparks I mentioned. All three had deep CFs, shallow foul lines, and good power alleys. That forces you to play baseball, not Home Run Derby.
You keep saying this park had "good power alleys." Maybe you think it wasn't designed for football, but there's no getting around the fact that with the exception of the foul lines, the left field dimensions were 40-60 feet longer than the corresponding right field dimensions.
The stadium opened for the 1923 season for the Yankees. The first college football game was played there in October of 1923. College games were played there regularly over the years.
I know the history of the place. It was not designed for football. It ws designed to take advantage of Colonel Ruppert’s best asset — and to get in John McGraw’s face.
This interesting observation was posted on a FAcebook baseball group I belong to:
“I was doing a little research. All this talk about DHers being accomplished hitters. I couldn’t find easily gathered stats for 2018; but I did for ‘17. Of the “top 15” not 1 batted .300 26 guys, that are real players batted .300 that season but the guys that “hit for a living” not only couldn’t hit .300, none came close. The guy that came closest was Corey Dickerson. He hit .282 and he’s in the NL now. 9 hit .250 or less. 1 hit less than .200. The top 9 paid DHers for this coming season are going to make about $175,000,000 combined. 1 would think that at least 1 of these guys with what they’re being paid that “hit for a living” would be Triple Crown contenders.”
In many cases, the DH is a former slugger well past his glory days. Good for the occasional dramatic home run, they are basically an easy out, as your stats point out. Ball clubs are just not getting their bang for the buck.
Or pumped up on steroids, like Big Papi.
Those are interesting stats, but they seem misleading to me. Go back and see the same figures for home runs, RBIs and slugging pct. Most DHs seem to be power hitters these days. Giancarlo Stanton, for example, was the Yankees’ DH last year most of the time. He only hit .266 but he led the team in HRs and RBIs.
yup, the kid was an ace in the making and never recovered from that injury.
It's also worth noting that since the DH has no value on the field defensively, it's probably the lineup spot that gets platooned more often than any other.
Do you think he wouldn’t be in the lineup if they didn’t have the DH?
There are only so many starting jobs as first basemen to go around!
Perhaps not, but first base seems to be the Yankees’ weak position.
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