What's going on? Do they need to start roiding up again? Someone get Mike Mauti and his WWE FB teammate on the horn.
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OT: 6 no-hitters already?
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
- Start date
I’d have to think the all-or-nothing strategy at the plate has had a factor in this. Strikeouts account for .243 of all plate appearances right now. More strikeouts = less balls in play.
Exactly. This launch angle crap is creating a all or nothing approach. Through the first quarter of the season there has been over 1500 more strikeouts than hits in the game yet home runs are still being hit.This approach coupled with shifts where a second baseman could be positioned in basically short right field and throw out the hitter along with three fielders on one side of the field are negating offense. Baseball with this type of play coupled with a pending labor dispute spell trouble for what once was the national pastime.
Look at batting averages. They no longer have lineups with .300 hitters. Maybe 1, 2 at most per lineup. You used to never see more than maybe one player under .225 batting average, maybe a defensive short stop and a pitcher, now half the lineup is under this. The sport, thanks to analytic geeks has become a shell of what it once was, and it sucks.
Man, I dont watch baseball but what you are saying is crazy. I looked it up and only 21 players are hitting more than .300.
Pitchers have never been better or thrown harder, and MLB has screwed around with the baseballs over the past few years to try and limit home runs, and it’s resulted in overcompensation in the other direction. It isn’t all hitter tendencies.
Pitchers have adjusted. They throw more offspeed pitches. They are pitching again and not just trying to throw it past people
It wasn't that long ago (10 years?) when I remember the Cards lineup had 7 of 9 batting above .300. I remember the median batting average was around .280. The median is now around .258. There are more players hitting under .225 than there are over .300.
It ain't all because of pitching either. It is the HR or bust mentality.
When I first starting watching baseball, a guy who threw 92 was considered a hard thrower. Now, people could throw 92 with their non-dominant arm. Balls are coming in harder and with more movement than ever before.
Just a hunch, but I believe pitchers being taller also has something to do with it. Try hitting a ball from a batting cage where the ball shoots straight out versus an old-fashioned one where a mechanical arm throws the ball on a downward trajectory. The latter is much more difficult.
They should just flatten the mounds to ground-level and get rid of the hump. I hate how they piss around with the baseball every year and you never know what you're going to get. A few years ago, everyone's hitting stats were inflated and an ERA around 4.00 was good.
Just a hunch, but I believe pitchers being taller also has something to do with it. Try hitting a ball from a batting cage where the ball shoots straight out versus an old-fashioned one where a mechanical arm throws the ball on a downward trajectory. The latter is much more difficult.
They should just flatten the mounds to ground-level and get rid of the hump. I hate how they piss around with the baseball every year and you never know what you're going to get. A few years ago, everyone's hitting stats were inflated and an ERA around 4.00 was good.
shifts have really hurt left handed bats as well forcing more to look for a power swing than spraying singles to that side.
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I’m not crazy about completely removing the mound but I do believe it should be lowered. A way to fix this all or nothing approach would be to move the fences back but that will never happen.
The baseball this year is absurd, when they openly admit to deadening it before the season you know that it's going to be really bad because it isn't as if they did extensive play testing on that. And boy, that thing doesn't fly at all.
Couple that with the fact that pitchers are focusing on biomechanics and pitch tunneling from the time that they are teenagers, AND are throwing harder than ever, AND using grip aids that add 10% to their spin rates, AND teams are using shifts that take away 33% of the field and you have a situation where hitting a baseball is more impossible than ever before.
It's what happens when a sport has no leadership because most of these situations have very easy fixes but instead Manfred is tasked with focusing on other things like starting runners on second base in extras.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Are the 2021 Mariners the worst hitting team in baseball history? They certainly have to be on pace for it.
Your Pittsburgh Pirates are bringing up the rear in team slugging percentage this year at 343. The Mariners are in 26th place at 360.
Yeah, a lot of people like to talk about how hitters only want to hit home runs anymore...but the fact is that the home run percentage has gone up because a home run is one of the only hits that the shift hasn’t taken away. It’s so much harder to hit singles and doubles anymore.
What has always confused me was the lack of teaching how to bunt. We practiced bunting throughout high school.
Could it be that hitters aren’t taught to hit to the opposite field because they are swinging away for the home run? Hence they are pull hitters.
I heard a good comment from a baseball coach today. He was talking about when he coached HS kids, he told them, "the first two strikes are yours to do what you want. The third strike is mine." Meaning, on 2 strikes, he wanted his batter to choke up a bit, go the other way with outside pitches, put the ball in play somewhere and not just try and pull everything down the line.
Sounds good in theory, but what pitcher is going to throw outside on 2 strikes if their defense is shifted? If the solution was that simple the trends wouldn't be shifting so drastically over the last 2 years.
With pitchers throwing so hard, it makes hitting oppo a lot tougher. When each team has a half dozen guys hitting close to 100, putting the ball in play at all almost requires you to cheat fastball a lot of the time to overcome human reaction time. And if you’re cheating fastball, it’s almost impossible to let the ball get deep enough into the zone to go the other way with it.
When I was a kid and played like Stratomatic baseball, I don't think most decent MLB teams had more than two batter under .236, and one was a pitcher.
Pedro Alvarez was ahead of his time. Should still be in the league hitting river shots and striking out 240 times.
... And also throwing balls in the river, too.
... And also throwing balls in the river, too.
This line of thinking is partially why I don’t think the rules of baseball should be dramatically altered in response to this trend and others.
IMO, it’s all cyclical; the pitchers have adapted to what the hitters can do and I have to think they will adapt as well. Wouldn’t be surprised to see a huge wave of under-the-radar prospects come up and carve out nice careers just by putting the ball in play.
Actually, if guys wanted to hitting singles against the shift is just about the easiest thing to do. A couple times already this season Colin Moran has shown how to do it. Simply lay a bunt down the 3rd base line and walk to first. In fact last season a couple guys bunted the ball hard enough that by the time any fielders could retrieve the ball they were standing on second with a double.
But that isn't what teams preach to their hitters to do, and guys still get rewarded in their contracts for hitting more home runs, so most players absolutely will not even consider taking the free single instead of trying to power the ball through a shift.
Here's Orlando Arcia against, of all teams, the Pirates, showing how to do it. And he's a right handed batter and the shift wasn't nearly as pronounced as a lot of lefties get, but the idea is the same. Free double. Two free RBIs. Most major league baseball players wouldn't even consider doing it.
And I don't get that. Except for the Anal geeks devaluing RBI's and Batting Avg. The Dodgers won the World Series last year, not based on playing Sabremetrics, but having the most talented roster.
Thank you. An educated post instead of the typical old man yelling “launch angle”!!!!!
Now all we need is chin music to be brought back. Now that was when pitchers could pitch
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I don't follow baseball a ton anymore but this comment seemed to go against everything I had heard about the organization so I decided to look it up.
The Dodgers abused the shift more than any team in the league last year with a shift on more than 55% of plate appearances (77% vs LH). Their President of Operations is a former Bear Stearns and private equity analyst whose executive development tree is a who's who of analytics based teams in the league including the GMs of the Astros and Rays and the Chief Baseball Officer for Boston.
The Dodgers may very well have the most talented roster, many of whom were home-grown talent brought up in that system, but it seems pretty disingenuous to discount their use of advanced analytics to shape their strategies, training, and success.
If only it was this easy to do. Baseball simply needs more guys like Wade Boggs and Tony Gwynn.
Pitchers throwing harder than ever, batters are getting hit more now than ever in the history of baseball (2x-3x the rate in the 70s), and multiple All-Stars have spent time on the disabled list as a result of being beaned. This makes me believe that that they should not bring back this practice.
A few things:
Have you ever tried to bunt 96 with movement? Or an MLB slider? It’s not easy to just place the ball.
Also,
so much depends on the hitter and situation. Do you really want your best power hitter messing around trying to lay a bunt down when your down 1? So he gets to first... which it isn’t easy to bunt against MLB pitching... and then you still have to rely on either 2 singles against MLB pitching or a double/HR... so if you’re counting on 2 singles, good luck... if you’re counting on a double/HR... well why not let your power hitter try for that?
MLB pitching/fielding has gotten so good and that’s the piece that everyone ignores.
I don’t think the people that make comments like he did actually watch baseball or watch videos from accounts like PitchingNinja. The stuff these guys have today is UNREAL. Sure, they are good enough hitters that “putting it in play” is possible if that’s their only goal. But weak ground balls and flares don’t do much at the MLB level. It’s not like D3 baseball where you play on shitty fields and the team will boot the ball around if you just put the ball in play at all costs.
Pristine field conditions, cutting edge equipment, and players who focus on physical fitness year-round and aren't hungover and high on coke have probably had nearly as much of an impact defensively as the shift if we're being honest with ourselves.
Even guys like Kyle Schwarber can cover an amazing amount of ground out there.
