2019 MLB Regular Season running thread

Ding, ding

 

There's a bunch of things at play here, and I don't think drugs are all of it. It's probably a fraction.

Are players swinging harder and looking to put it in the air? Jesus, yes. Swing for a bomb with two strikes or try to go opposite field? Swing deep baby.

Pitchers are throwing harder. Physics is still fucking physics. 1 MPH = 7 feet for distance.

You get a new baseball almost every fucking pitch. It's ok to play with one that has dirt on it.

Some parks are smaller.

There's a lot of factors, and it adds up to boring baseball.

 

MLB lifers decry the state of the modern baseball: 'Unwatchable'

Goose Gossage is the best.

“I can’t watch these games anymore,’’ Gossage said. “It’s not baseball. It’s unwatchable. A lot of the strategy of the game, the beauty of the game, it’s all gone.

“It’s like a video game now. It’s home run derby with their (expletive) launch angle every night.’’

...

“They got it so an [expletive] coming off the street who doesn’t even know what a damn baseball is can manage our sport. It’s like rotisserie baseball. These [expletives] won their rotisserie leagues at Harvard and all of those [expletive] schools and now they’re general [expletive] managers.”

 

He's 90% correct.

 

Sadly as a lifelong fan I agree. Today’s game has lost me. Is it more boring? Yeah with so many Ks and then HRs, the D is lost. Then you watch shifts and you lose the beautiful infield play and can’t compare it to what I’ve seen in the past. Starters only going 5? One of big draws for me before was watching the stud who dominated, Koufax, Marichal, Ryan, Guidry, Maddux, Lincecum, that’s going fast.

 

Well then, there should be a market for someone to hire one of these old timers and show these nerds how it’s done. I’m sure it would be a rounding success. A reverse Moneyball.

 

This is a perfect Yankee fan response, still arguing the 2006 MVP Award and making sure to get in the dig about Ortiz using steroids. (My only question is if he started then or if he had done them all along.)

 

Avoid Boston sports talk radio. Andrews says TJ not needed, but he took a platelet injection and has been shut down for six weeks. Basically, done for the year. Lot of hysterics in the air.
Between this, Price and Evoldi's injuries, and Porcello's struggles, the bill came in on all their work out of the pen in the 2018 playoffs. It produced a world championship. No whining here.

 

They play to the stadiums around them.

Turf and fences not 310 feet away would make the numbers tell people to hit differently.

 

Not sure what drives me crazier, the shifts or that hitters don't or won't adjust their approach to beat the shifts.

 

Editor of Baseball America found a 1955 interview with Ted Williams in which he cited infield shifting as one of the reasons the game was better then than when he broke into the big leagues. I have to believe Ted felt it gave him an edge. Why don't other hitters see that edge and work on it. A shift against Wade Boggs or Tony Gwynn would've been pure suicide.