2022 MLB Season Thread
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deacdixieboy
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Agreed, especially with some I do the folks left out. I still don’t get how Andruw and Wagner are out while someone like Rolen is in. If you are a HOF player I should’ve feared playing you. I did not fear playing Rolen. He was fine.
deacvision7
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Scott Rolen? lol that's stupid
TownieDeac
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The voting system is so broken
PhDeac
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Ridiculous that 10% of knowledgeable members of the baseball community can think someone is a Hall of Famer and then a few years later another 65% agree.
No other sport has debates about who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s obvious.
No other sport has debates about who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s obvious.
deacdixieboy
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MLB HOF is a little more exclusive than other sports but yes, it’s ridiculous. McGriff’s highest vote total by writers who never played the game was 39% then he immediately gets elected by other players. Stupid.
deacdixieboy
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That fucking sucks. I hate it.
That's complete and utter garbage imo. I think with all these rule changes they have missed the one that would make the biggest difference, and that's moving the mound back. We need the ball in play more, because it creates more action. The HR or K duality that baseball has become is boring, and moving the mound back would lead to an increase in averages and stolen bases and would change the analytics that has fueled the shift towards swinging for HRs as the only way to score runs.
Out of the new rules that have been brought in, I LOVE the bigger bases and think it will increase action on the basepaths which fans love. I'm kind of indifferent with the shift ban because I think I'll probably like the effect it has but I just hate that it became necessary. I don't think the pitch clock will be a factor after a month of getting used to it, and it will have a positive impact.
deac29
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They moved the mound back to 61’6” in the Atlantic League (with financial encouragement from MLB). K rate increased and triple slash lines decreased across the board. Break increases over the extra distance, offsetting the hitting benefit of extra reaction time.
The ability of pitchers to manipulate the ball so extremely is one of the biggest problems and long term questions facing baseball. I didn't realize that it ended up being such a failure in the Atlantic League, I thought I had read early on that it was working. They need to figure out how to alter the ball so that it is not so easy to be unhittable, and while this is basically impossible to regulate, having pitchers come in with the intention of racking up Ks versus 10 years ago the intention of going deep into a game is damaging.
YoungBuck95
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Why are the pitchers so good!!!!
The honest answer is physics. It's also substances (yes, they're still used it has just changed with the crackdown).
Frosty
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Ultimately, I don't have an issue with the league taking steps to shorten games. My biggest issue with the Manfred runner is that it's already a solved problem - and one that was easily solved at that. Sac bunt, sac fly gets the run in which is a pretty anticlimactic way to drag through extras.
If the goal is to make games a more easily consumable product timewise, are extra inning games really even the best target? They already represent a small portion of games and the 13+ inning marathons are such a small outlier. If extra inning games are that big of a deal then just change the game so it can end in a tie. I'd honestly rather watch that than an extra hour a teams trying to small ball a run in each inning.
If they're really that concerned about the length of games they wouldn't have banned the shift. Games where a pitcher is getting shelled have to be more common.
deactherunner
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Agree with this. IMO, a main factor for the increase in game length is pitches seen per plate appearance. Increase of 7% since 1988 would add 10 minutes to a 2.5 hour game if it was the only factor. Seems like it's mostly a philosophical approach-hitters are more likely to wait for the perfect pitch to hit out of the park and are willing to accept a walk and risk a K in doing so. (Moving the mound back would exacerbate this.) Pitchers seem to be scouted with an emphasis on throwing hard with the hope that they'll figure out control later. Circling back to the extra innings philosophy, pitchers are incentivized to go for the strikeout if it means risking a walk (since a walk would not advance the runner). The dumb Manfred man rule was written by people who really missed the sacrifice bunt.
Encourage all baseball fans to give this a watch / listen, or read below for a rambling summary.
Theo hits the nail on the head. First of all, I think it's less about the game being longer and more about there being less action. The 4 true outcomes (strikeout, HR, walk, hit by pitch) used to happen around 20-25% of the time, and now it's something like 40% of plate appearances that end without a live play, and these are usually at bats that get deep into counts. The reason for this is the pitching has gotten so good, particularly through physics breakthroughs around breaking balls, that analytics tells teams it is better to accept a higher K rate in the hope of hitting more HRs, because the likelihood of scoring runs through base hits, steals, bunts, sacs, etc. is so low with pitching at this level. So, with less action and longer at bats, the game is not only slower, but far more boring. Another key is that for most of baseball history, the goal of a starting pitcher would be to get as deep into a game as possible, and hopefully hand the ball to a closer or back end of the bullpen. Now, with the advances in physics and "pitch science", pitchers go for maximum Ks and don't pitch to contact to get deep into games. The Rays were the first team to really push this logic forward and it worked and has stuck. They'd rather throw 5 pitchers a game and max them out (unfortunately injuries become common) for an inning or two than have a rotation of seasoned starters that can go deep. This further increases K rate, further reinforces the feedback loop that playing for the HR ball is the only way to score, and slows the game and takes away action. I love that Theo is exploring ways to counteract these problems, and we will see the first major tweaks in action this year. Can't wait.
Deaconblue
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Another sad day, as another of the all time greats passes from among us.
Condolences to his family and friends.
RIP, Tim.
Condolences to his family and friends.
RIP, Tim.