2021 MLB Regular Season thread

Kluber is throwing the no-hitter in the east coast games. Unsure who is scheduled to throw one later tonight.

 

Kershaw.

 

Is LaRussa the first HOF manager to manage after his induction since Connie Mack?

 

Six no-hitters this year, but only three teams have been on the wrong end. Rangers, Tribe and Mariners. What's weird is that it isn't like Cleveland and Seattle are terrible. Nice to see some complete games for a change.

 

The Mariners team has a .199 batting average for the season.

 

And would be over .500 without those two no-nos.

 

Cleveland isn’t terrible, but its line-up is horrific. Not sure why teams don’t just work around Jose Ramirez and Franmil Reyes.

 

With all of the new baseball stats out there, the slicing and dicing - is there some isolated metric that can isolate why some teams are better at hitting than others? Heck, they've isolated "spin" for pitchers and launch angles for hitters. Hitting surges and slumps have to be one of the few "mysteries of the game" that have yet to be quantified and explained.

 

You mean like...

You started to swing too late.
You swung at the wrong pitch.
You thought it was one pitch but it was another.
Swing the bat faster.
Make the barrel of the bat hit the baseball at this point if your swing.
If that pitch is there, hit it to that field.

But, yes, bat speed could be measured. Contact rate could be measured.

But you don’t have to swing as hard as you can to be a good hitter. In fact, you probably shouldn’t.

 

With the upper cut swings guys are taking, the bat isn’t staying on plane, the thing that allows hitters avoid slumps when their timing is off.

I look at Lindor’s struggles with the Mets. When he came up in 2015, even when he was fooled he sprayed line-drive lasers the other way and was a real headache to get out. He’s now a traditional slugger But he also got $400 million because he made that trade-off. It’s tough to convince guys it’s not worth it.

 

From one of the greatest hitters of all-time.

 

Rod Carew has popped up on my Twitter feed in the past couple of days. He made two pretty good points when asked about today's approach to hitting:

1. A lot of guys are trying to hit home runs who shouldn't be trying to hit home runs.
2. Not enough players are taking a different approach with two-strike counts.

Whether he's right or not, he's in the Hall of Fame for hitting .328 with a .393 on-base percentage.

EDIT: DAMN IT! Splendid Splinter beat me to it.