Pete Rose is dead

Who went on to have a damn decent career.

 

You can argue the case for Pete Rose in the hall of fame forever and I suspect people probably will.

I have always wondered what kind of hitter Rose would be in todays game. Rose hit over .300 13 of the 14 years from 1966-1979. The only year he was under .300 was in 1974 when he hot .282. But he had been more careful at the plate and had increased his walks from a career high of 73 to 105 so his OBP was still .385 and he lead the the NL in runs scored.

The story is that the Reds tried to cut his salary by 5k because he had not hit .300. I do know I watched an interview the next year and he said he need to hit above .300 again and was going to be more aggressive and not take as many walks in order to accomplish that.

In this era where OBP is actually a thing I wonder if Rose would be saying the same thing, I also wonder if Rose, who in Baseball Reference is listed at 5-11 and 192 pounds would have been a singles hitter, or would have been encourage to pull the ball and try for the fences.

 

Betting on baseball is still forbidden for players in MLB, is it not? What Rose did eats at the credibility of the game in a way PED use does not. We have to believe that everyone is trying to win or there is no reason to pay attention at all.

 

Yes, it's forbidden, but the game has no credibility, so there's nothing to eat at. Again, just two days ago people were suggesting the Mets and Braves should throw their double-header. And If a pitcher was not on PEDs and the hitter was, that didn't eat at anything?

Pete Rose was a turd of the highest degree. But you'll never, ever, convince anyone who watched him play or knew much about him that he wasn't always trying to win. And by trying, I mean more than anyone who ever played the game.

 

not to turn this into a odd Phillies management decision threadjack, but I have to wonder if Morrison’s name came up a few years later when they were discussing moving Sandberg.

Based on his AAA stats, Morrison was a prospect who hit for power and average, but had bombed at the plate in the majors in 1978. You have to think someone would have said, “hey, we all thought Morrison couldn’t be a full time player a few years ago and he is playing great for the White Sox..are we sure we want to get rid of Sandberg?”

 

As is the case in almost every abusive relationship, nobody loved and disrespected the game of baseball more than Pete Rose.

 

Seems counterintuitive to a non-hitting expert like me. "I'm going to be less disciplined, swing at worse pitches, pitches outside the strike zone . . . so my batting average will go up."

 

That is what Rose said. I think an example would be that a pitcher hangs a curveball just outside the strike zone but actually is a good pitch to hit. Does a hitter chase it or take?

 

Richie Hebner. A name I couldn't imagine reading ever again.

 

When doing cross-era comparisons, I kind of suspect that most great players would "figure it out" and be able to adjust their games appropriately. I think it's more of an issue for extreme splits - would old school managers have had as much patience for Adam Dunn's strikeouts? And, hard to imagine Mark Belanger types making their way to the majors now.

 

Is there evidence that the Mets and Braves actually did it? I haven't seen any. The Mets sat most of their key guys because it was a meaningless game for them and they were going to have to play a playoff game the next day.

Cheating to try to win is not the same as fixing the game and not trying to win. To me, teams tanking is a far better comparison to what Rose did.

Let's put aside the claim regarding Rose's effort in games he played, which I do not doubt. The issue is what he did as a manager. Rose the competitor wasn't just worrying about his team's overall fate. He was trying to win his bets. That meant he might leave a top starter in too long or overuse his bullpen on days when he has big money on the game, then do less to win on days when he didn't. You know this. You've seen this argument before. I've written it in the past and on this thread.

 

There was a Tank McNamara cartoon when the Rose case was happening where two guys in a bar are talking about it and one makes the claim a manager can't really affect the game's outcome. The voice from the TV they're looking at then goes, "Holy Cow, that's the fifth intentional walk this inning!"