John_Havok

Ohtani wouldn't be the DH though he would be hitting in the lineup as the P spot. The DH rule doesn't even mandate using the DH, it just removes the ability to force pitchers to hit as a pitcher in the AL, so a universal DH rule would just remove the forced pitcher spot hitting in the NL. Teams would still be free to choose to allow the P spot to hit if they had a guy like Ohtani, but when he is removed as the pitcher, no he could not be allowed to remain in the game as the DH, because the DH spot wouldnt exist on the lineup card that day. I'm torn on the shift to the point of apathy. If they want to do make general rules about where an infielder has to start the play, I don't really care. Anything short of drawing a circle on the diamond where each player has to stand is probably not going to change anything. I don't particularly like the runner on 2nd in extra innings, but I understand why they thought it was a good idea for the regular season to keep the games shorter, keep teams from getting their entire pen worked over in one game that screws them for a week. Yeah, it's fine. 7 inning doubleheaders... same as above. Don't really like it, but understand why it's felt to be a good thing in the regular season. Pitch clock needs to happen. It's pure dogshit that a pitcher and catcher can't figure out which 1 of 3 or 4 pitches can be thrown in even 25 seconds from the time the pitcher gets the ball back from the previous pitch. The human rain delay pitchers can f*** off. Keep the game moving. I'd never thought about limiting pickoff attempts as a thing, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. It would quite likely lead to more scoring, which is great in my book. Robo umps behind the plate are a f***ing necessity. The sooner the better. Tweak the rule on challenges also. Who cares what the call on the field is... the replay officials only goal should be to confirm whether or not the runner is clearly out. Clearly. Like 0 doubt. If it's not conclusively out, he's safe. It's not hard and it should not take long. If you can't determine if he's out after 3 minutes, safe. Time limit on that as well.

Without knowing the data they are looking at, and what constitutes the type of collisions they are referring to. Injury reduction would be tough to quantify without a mountain of data since a piss poor slide could cause an injury and that has nothing to do with anything other than poor fundamentals. I'm sure they have specific criteria they need to see to include any sort of play in their data review, but what those criteria are would be great if it was public.

Games still take way too long when they don't need to.

Bit of an understatement. He hit that ball off planet. Just destroyed that pitch

I get him playing, just... move him down a bit or something.

Matt Olson could be an under-the-radar type of target. Oakland is always in payroll shedding mode when a guy gets towards arbitration 2 and 3 and that's where Olson will be after this season. He fits the LH need and would still be cost controlled for 2022 and 2023. Doesn't add much defensive versatility and would strictly be 1b/DH but dude rakes and at worst... he gets on base. I love the thought of going after Ramirez, but I just don't know how that kind of deal gets pulled off. The costs would be significant.

I dont see many panicking except one or two trolls. The conversation about next years holes is gonna happen whether they make it in or not.

Great target, but the real question is why would the Reds be trading one of their best assets when he is also still a few years from free agency (2024), and they themselves are trying to make the last push to get into the playoffs in the next few years?

If a "your mom" joke is the best you got after a short ban, you probably need another one to come up with better material.

So lets just wrap it up with Freddie Freeman and Corey Seager and call it a World Series appearance. Done.

I clink on them every once in a while just to help out the guy who maintains the site. No big deal, but i dont click on all the asian porn ones. No idea where they come from.

Didnt they just try this with Dickerson?

I really hope there is no lockout, but the way things have looked between MLB and the PA the last two shortened years, I fear the worst. Hell there's a grievance right now by the MLBPA against the MLB accusing them of not negotiating in good faith about the 60 game season last year and that could actually drag out long enough that it's still going on when the CBA negotiations start - which is just a s***** place to even start. using a highly technical, unexplainable mathematical equation based in string theory and just my own raw pessimism, I put the chances of a lockout at a solid 75%.

But, like I said, it's not impossible, just improbable. I just looked at Walter johnsons 1914 season as an example. He pitched 51 games that year, mostly pitching 1 day, getting 2 days off, then pitching again. Some starts he threw, had only 1 day off then threw again. THere were a few instances of having 4 days rest, but they were not the regular situations, those were few and far between. So ... does it seem likely that a guy in 1914 threw nearly 400 innings of baseball over 51 games, throwing 100mph and not needing regular rest of at least 4 days? I'm leaning towards no. Then keep asking that question with the velocity dropping until it makes sense and you'll likely arrive at the conclusion that pitchers back then didn't even come close to the velocity of todays starting pitchers. Nolan Ryan's biggest workload year was 1974, 41 starts, and he had minimum 3 or 4 days rest between starts. I didn't look close enough to see if 3 days or 4 happened more often.

Ryan didn't pitch every game.' We were talking about Walter Johnson in 1907 vs today. Comparing the late 70s to today is far closer. And Ryan was the unicorn, he is not representative of the average pitcher of the 70s or 80s.

Everything you say is true, except that it ignores several key concepts, and I'll focus on pitching in my example. Today's pitchers, you can see most of them are max effort to get the velocity they get. Even watching old footage of games you can tell the pitchers then were not. Then you also have to take into account that IF Walter Johnson was throwing 100mph consistently as Jim suggests, he would have been doing so every game from start to finish? There wasn't 5 man rotations back then. His arm just didn't need to recuperate after throwing that hard for the entire game day after day? That is HIGHLY unlikely, therefore it's reasonable to assume that he was not, in fact, throwing 100 mph in his games and his in game velocity was quite likely much lower, or his arm would have fallen off. Could he have thrown 100mph outside of a game max effort? Sure, I can't say it's impossible, but I can make reason based judgements that the way pitching worked back then it was highly unlikely that he was doing so in games. second, what did they actually do for training? Almost nothing in fact. There was no studying pitching mechanics, no weighted ball programs, no real understanding of kinesiology (which only began being truly studied in the 60's), these guys literally just showed up at the ball park and tried to hit the catchers mitt. Repetition was their only real training.

Funny thing, when i view your comment, the ad beneath it is to get vaccinated. LOL

True, that's just a guess based on avg velocity increases that have been reliably obvserved from the 60's onward. Yes Feller was clocked that hard outside of games, never in a game and was clocked using a Lumiline Chronograph, which was developed in WW2 to measure the speeds of anti-tank rounds. How accurate was the Lumiline Chronograph? Nobody really knew. It was just the best guesses they had based on the tech of the time. Its not like they really need to measure anti-tank round velocities down to the 10ths of a MPH, or even to a whole MPH number. I've researched this stuff to death, there was NO way to reliably clock pitching speeds with any degree of accuracy. Even early radar in the mid 50's had huge swings in their numbers because the tech was still so new at being used for that kind of thing.

And if you believe either of those... I've got some oceanfront property in Alberta you really need to get a look at. Old timey stuff like that was 100% exaggerated at every opportunity to sensationalize. There were few ways to even reliably clock speeds that high back then. There's also a difference in how hard they could throw max effort off the field vs what they did in games. Didn't you know? Satchel Paige threw 105 mph with pinpoint command according to the legends.

It's not a fair comparison though. Grichuk strikes out when pitchers are throwing 90-100 MPH. Almost nobody struck out in Ruth's era, because pitchers threw maybe 75mph tops? For a hitter from today, facing 75mph on a daily basis is batting practice. Any hitter from today would likely hit 200 HRs a season if they were just sent back in time to the 20s. Thats why its not fair to compare "talent" from era to era. Giancarlo Stanton would hit a HR nearly every AB facing 75mph.

Best hitter compared to the peers of his era, no doubt. He was just on another planet, but as well know, when the pool of talent is low, outliers are more likely to show up. Him hitting that many HR's so early in the game's history, there's really no fair way to compare that to today. He was light years ahead of his peers. That type of dominance will never be seen again in any sport.

There's no way to compare it fairly. wRC+ and stats like that that rate where you are compared to league average do a decent job as a starting point, but even then, when you consider that a replacement level player now is light years better than a replacement level player in the 50's, it's still not really all that discussion worthy. The game is so different today from back then. Pitching differences especially.

Not really in the same spirit of the article though, nobody made the playoffs that season.

I find these types of arguments futile for the most part. The simple facts are that every great hitter today would annihilate any great hitter of the past, simply because today's hitters play in the deepest pool of talent there has ever been and the game evolves. It's the same in any sport. The only debate really is whether or not the hitters today are more dominant in their era than those of the past, and even then it's not really apples to apples given the talent pool differences.

Both are not really all that unlikely to happen, but...I'd probably lean towards Vlad walking more as pitchers just pitch around him more, plus really good hitters tend to improve their walk rates over time anyways.