MLB 2022: The Long and Winding Thread

Jose Ramirez tried to start going the other way against the shift a couple years ago and completely jacked ip his swing for half a season, turning (along with a wrist injury) one of baseball’s best hitters into a pop-up machine.

It’s not as simple as just “going the other way.” These guys learned from a young age to turn on a fastball. It’s like telling a pro golfer at 28 to change his swing completely. Things could go terribly wrong.

 

It's not so easy to just drop a bunt down on the other side. Plus you still need one, probably two more hits to bring the guy home. So just swing for the fences. You're more likely to get a run that way rather than knock a guy around the bases.

 

I agree with this. I'm sure others will mock me as poo-poo-ing the analytic folks, which is fine. And I get the analytics (meaning, I understand why they use them). They've figured out the best way to produce the most runs, and the best ways to try to prevent the most runs. That translates into more wins, fewer losses, whatever. And that's smart. Genius, in fact. But the analysts are a bit shortsighted.

What is nowhere in the propellor-heads' formulas is that it's a fucking game. It's a spectator event. It's entertainment. People spend large sums of hard-earned money to watch it (or, increasingly, don't), and they want to be entertained, not bored to tears. And stat wonks are basically saying, "Fuck entertaining the spectators. We're going to put on a boring-ass product because we might win a few more games," even though evidence suggests interest is waning and barring changes this sport will no longer be relevant. Fuck relevance, though, right? Because winning!

I'm sure it was a dumb way to play baseball, but give me the 1985-87 St. Louis Cardinals any day of the week. We like watching basketball and football so much because people do so many athletic things. Baseball is no different, and now they're not doing athletic things very much. And hitting balls 400 feet is not athletic. Fat guys do it. And now not only are they not doing athletic things, they're taking an extra hour to not do them. Baseball today is like watching the Apollo rocket wheeled out to the lanch pad on the crawler-transporter instead of watching it blast off. (LAUNCH ANGLE!!!!!ONE!!!1!!!)

Now, where'd I put that slide rule ...

 

Bauer suspended by the MLB for 2 years.

 

Ditto....you meant the HP Calculator right?

The people in charge, the Commissioner, the owners, at to a smaller extent the players, need to understand what's at stake. Somehow they have to bring the athleticism back otherwise it is going to die.

McGwire v. Sosa was riveting because there was still a contrast to other players. Here's my example, while Kent was a force at the plate, I had zero interest watching him play 2B. He was stiff as a board. I'd rather watch Robby Alomar than him every day of the week. Or even Biggio (HOF er because of 3000 hits but never dominant IMHO). Even today, I'd rather watch Albies, Semien, I've never thought of baseball as 7 sluggers out in the field. I mean one Luzinski in LF, okay, but 3? No.

Admittedly, I've always been the leadoff SS/2B guy with a slick glove so I love watching fielding. I could watch that bad hop play by Ozzie while he's laid out over any HR every day. The less of that, the less interest I have.

 

The Bauer news is appropriately placed here. Hopefully buried and forgotten, like him.

 

You had me until the reference to the mid-’80s Cardinals. Man, I loathed that team.

 

I disliked the 80's Cards team because it beat my '87 Giants (and Smith sucker punched Clark) but I respected them, they were a team. McGee, Herr, Ozzie, Clark, Tudor. They played baseball the way I enjoyed baseball being played.

 

The '80s Cards were all about Tommy Herr's stirrups and mastery of RBI-hitting.

 

A huge part of it is the disappearance of artificial turf from the game, which all baseball purists wildly applauded.

What needs to happen (without costly major construction at stadiums)

1) Home runs go down

2) Scoring overall does NOT go down, in fact it goes up somewhat

3) Time spent on extraneous time-wasting bullshit (nut-scratching, wristband-adjusting, lazy-toss throws over to first on halfass pickoff attempts, warmup throws on monotonous mid-inning pitching changes) needs to be boiled down to next to nothing.

 

As did every player's knees.

 

You know I watched a replay of a '75 WS game a few months ago and was struck by how much the batters got out of the box after each pitch. I said "huh, I guess I had it wrong". What was sped up was how fast pitches were made after the batter got back in the box. I think the commercial breaks have been elongated though. Frequency of Pitching changes are brutal nowadays. Plus the lack of any plays in the field just sends the wrong message about the game.