The worst thing is some of this can be fixed easily lower mound a little, limit or ban grip aids etcetc. But the shift to hit more homeruns at the expense of getting on base isnt likely to go away
OT: 6 no-hitters already?
- Thread starter Sean Miller Fan
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Yeah, none of these are even really hard fixes!
1. Stop messing around with the baseball. Why they think that altering the baseball every year will fix all of their problems is completely insane.
2. Grip aids are all prohibited so just enforce the rule. Test the ball at the end of every half inning and eject and suspend violators and you'll see that stop immediately.
3. Ban the shift. Enforce a two infielder on each side of the second base rule as well as keep infielders from lining up with both feet on the outfield grass.
4. Lower the mound. I don't want to go crazy and eliminate the mound altogether because it's an iconic part of baseball but lowering the mound slightly would help return pitching velocities to a more historical range.
I dont watch baseball but if the 3rd Baseman is playing SS then there is no reason in this world why that player shouldn't be bunting. I don't care who it is. They are offering you 1st Base.
Rennie Stennett’s passing brought back memories of how the game was played then and has changed now. “7 for 7” Rennie.
Guys like him were taught to swing level and stay more on top of the ball. Hit line drives. Go with the pitch and spray to all fields. Tony Gwynn. Rod Carew. Many others. Al Oliver could hit line drives consistently. Absolute bullets. Obviously Clemente, too.
Now it’s launch angle and exit velocity. Upper cutting and swinging hard. Dick Groat was still maybe the best hit & run guy I ever saw: If the 2nd baseman covered when the runner from first broke, Dick would drag the barrel and slap it through the hole on the right side; if the SS covered, Groat would roll his wrists and pull it through the hole at short. Richie Ashburn could foul off pitch after pitch to stay alive. No way you could shift vs bat control guys like that back then.
But like all sports, baseball has changed and evolved. It’s a different game and played differently now. Some like it; some don’t. Football teams throw 60-70 passes in a game. Basketball teams jack 3’s with impunity. Things change. Just how it is. 🤷♂️
Guys like him were taught to swing level and stay more on top of the ball. Hit line drives. Go with the pitch and spray to all fields. Tony Gwynn. Rod Carew. Many others. Al Oliver could hit line drives consistently. Absolute bullets. Obviously Clemente, too.
Now it’s launch angle and exit velocity. Upper cutting and swinging hard. Dick Groat was still maybe the best hit & run guy I ever saw: If the 2nd baseman covered when the runner from first broke, Dick would drag the barrel and slap it through the hole on the right side; if the SS covered, Groat would roll his wrists and pull it through the hole at short. Richie Ashburn could foul off pitch after pitch to stay alive. No way you could shift vs bat control guys like that back then.
But like all sports, baseball has changed and evolved. It’s a different game and played differently now. Some like it; some don’t. Football teams throw 60-70 passes in a game. Basketball teams jack 3’s with impunity. Things change. Just how it is. 🤷♂️
pittdan77
Athletic Director
Looks like we need better hitting coaches at the little league level. All hitters are born natural pull hitters.
I've seen a lot of studies that moving the mound back could actually LOWER batting averages because breaking stuff would come in at an even steeper angle so what you're gaining in mph you're losing in break. I feel as though lowering the mound is the much safer of the two options because we know exactly what that does.
No, I have obviously never tried to bunt 96 with movement. So I have no first hand knowledge as to how easy it is.
You know who does? Guys like Bob Walk and John Wehner and other former players who are announcer all over the league. And they agree with me. Just one time, listen to Bob Walk rip into someone for bunting the ball the wrong way into a double play, or when a team gives someone 60 feet of the third base line and they don't try to bunt the ball into the open space. HE thinks it's easy. And he has done it before.
So could I do it? Hell no. SHOULD basically every guy who plays major league baseball be able to do it? Yes. Obviously so. It's a hell of a lot easier to bunt a ball than it is to hit one with a regular swing. If you actually practice it once in a while and try to do it.
Now I do agree that there are times when you don't want your power hitter (for the record, the Pirates don't have any of them) to take the free single. Like you said, down one, bases empty, late in the game, sure, swing for the fences. But the fact is that it is a lot easier to score from first than it is to score from the batter's box. And the number one job of a major league batter is to not make an out. If your power hitter was up in the 9th with your team down by a run and he comes up and instead of hitting a home run he lines a single in front of the right fielder you take that every time. Before that guy hit the ball, if someone offered you the choice that he could either have a single or you'd take your chances on what happens when he swings away you take the single every time.
Unless you are in idiot.
Isn't one of the short season independant minor leagues supposed to be playing with the mound back a foot or two this year? They were supposed to do it either last year or the year before with the second half of the season (which seemed like a dumb idea) but ended up scrapping it.
I think moving the mound back a couple feet in the short term would be really hard on the pitchers. And like you and others have said, there are other ways to achieve the same results. But when given a choice, Rob Manford has clearly shown that he's in favor of any stupid idea someone can come up with rather than to do the simple things that would solve the problems just as well (ghost runners, seven inning games, etc.).
You know who else knows what it's like? Every single player and coach that is currently being paid $millions to strategize in the league against current pitchers. It's amazing that none of them have figured out something as simple as to just stick the bat out there and block the ball in the direction where there are no defenders.
I think you just found your golden ticket to an MLB executive position. I can picture the title of your million dollar PowerPoint.
Bat 1.000 against modern hurlers in 1 simple step.
BTW, the Vargas guy that the Pirates just picked up was just now batting in the top of the 2nd inning. The Braves are shifted so far over that the 3rd baseman is playing where the shortstop would normally be, if the shortstop was cheating towards second base for a potential double play. And John Wehner's quote was "if he wants it, it's a free single." He didn't want it.
Actually the purpose of bunting isn't to hit 1.000 (although that would be nice), it's to force the opponent to stop shifting. When Colin Moran took the free singles earlier this year that was nice. What was even better was that when Moran came up the rest of the game the 3rd baseman shifted his position by probably 40 or 50 feet, both in and towards the line. So he made it so that when Moran didn't bunt, the chance that he would get a hit was increased.
Bunting forces the other team to stop shifting, or at least to stop shifting so drastically. If you don't think that shifts are a problem for your hitters then there is no need to bother. If you do think they present your hitters with a problem the game already provides you with a solution. There is no need to put rules into place so that lazy batters and lazy teams don't have to think on the field.
Also BTW, former Pitt quarterback Kevin Smith is catching for the Braves tonight.
Yeah, the Atlantic league is playing a foot farther back in the second half of the season. I'm very curious to see what the results are but I don't expect much given that the sample size is already lower velocity and lower spin rate pitchers. If anything I suspect that we'll probably just see more arm injuries from over exertion given that a lot of these pitchers will already be near their inning cap and will have pitched from two different distances.
Again, just Manfred being dumb.
For a reserve catcher Smith really has flashed a good bat over his career. If he ever had gotten a chance he could have been a pretty league average starter, I suspect.
The other thing is that another foot just makes those MLB cutters/breaking balls/sinkers even nastier....
Not really sure what the solution is. There are things that can help but places like Driveline and the Baseball Ranch, etc, have fundamentally broken baseball to some degree. It just wasn’t meant for every guy to throw 97 with disgusting movement and the optimal kinetic chains that they’ve perfected since they are 16.
He has, in total, over four years of MLB service time at this point. I'm not sure anyone would have thought that was going to happen when he finally broke into the majors.
I wonder if instead of juicing the ball, if deadening it somewhat is the way to go. Make it so that it is harder to hit home runs and maybe more guys try to put the ball in play rather than the all or nothing, strikeout, walk, homerun, baseball that we are stuck in today happens.
Or maybe guys just swing that much harder.
Do you really think a bunch of guys could be .340 hitters if they just tried to “put the ball in play”?
That’s the whole point of why this all started. Because it’s really, really hard to get 3 straight singles. It’s just really hard to get a hit in general. Unless the ball is smoked.
Obviously not. Who ever said anything like that?
You know what makes it even harder to get three straight singles? If a team puts an extreme shift on you and all you do is to continue to hit the ball right into that shift.
If your head hurts because you keep beating it against a wall, step one isn't to see if you can get someone to tear down the wall. It's to stop beating your head against it.
pittdan77
Athletic Director
I'll be honest, while that makes some sense, the off-speed stuff wouldn't be nearly as effective. The hard breaking stuff would have to start higher in the zone and give batters more time to react. I'm not really certain of the science and I don't care to look it up, LOL.
