OnlyBucs

6D4B4C59505C4B5D553E0 wrote: Though the rule changes have different thoughts among different people, one thing I hate over everything else is the all or nothing mentality, and that has nothing to do with DH's, ghost runners, etc.



This Houston Seattle game isn't a classic pitchers duel. It's a classic whiff fest of each and every single hitter trying to hit a HR every time up.



That isn't baseball either. That's purely the effect of insane contracts going to power hitters. Everybody wants some.


I had the same thought. My son (11) wanted to switch to another game because it was so boring. I was trying to tell him that we were actually watching a classic game, but then I thought, are we, really?



It got to the point where a groundout or a pop-up was an exciting play.

Am I the only one who's shocked by how many playoff-caliber players have a batting average in the range of .200 to .220?



Seems like batting under .240 is the norm now, even on a good team.



I knew that was the trend but I haven't really watched much playoff baseball in the last few years and I didn't realize it was the case even on good teams.



John Smoltz (I think) on the Phillies/Braves broadcast was talking about how the Phillies were putting Braves pitchers under stress but having men on base all the time. Would love to see a team (maybe our team?) buck the trend and work toward getting more base hits at the cost of fewer home runs and strikeouts.

I'm thinking getting men on base is part of the idea driving the shift being banned. It's hard to say how many hits were lost by the short fielder being there to grab off a line drive or throw someone out at first on balls that make it through.

44465C5A4C290 wrote: I'm thinking getting men on base is part of the idea driving the shift being banned. It's hard to say how many hits were lost by the short fielder being there to grab off a line drive or throw someone out at first on balls that make it through.




I think that has a lot to do with it

515D54594E12485551534854450E0C7C5B513C0 wrote: Am I the only one who's shocked by how many playoff-caliber players have a batting average in the range of .200 to .220?



Seems like batting under .240 is the norm now, even on a good team.



I knew that was the trend but I haven't really watched much playoff baseball in the last few years and I didn't realize it was the case even on good teams.



John Smoltz (I think) on the Phillies/Braves broadcast was talking about how the Phillies were putting Braves pitchers under stress but having men on base all the time. Would love to see a team (maybe our team?) buck the trend and work toward getting more base hits at the cost of fewer home runs and strikeouts.
In MLB this year there were 130 qualifying batters (to qualify a player must have at least 3.1 ABs x number of games his team played, which is 502 ABs for 162 games).



Of those 130 batters, 99 (76%) batted .240 or better, 79 (61%) batted .250 or better. Only 43 (33%) hit .270 or better. Only 11 (8%) hit .300 or better.



The 3 highest BAs in MLB were all in the NL: McNeil (NYM) .326, Freeman (LAD) .325 and Goldschmidt (St.L.) .317. But these were the only .300 hitters in the NL. The AL had the other 8.



For power hitters, I checked the BAs of the 45 players with 25 or more HRs. 33 of them (73%) hit better than .240. The extremes are interesting with Judge leading MLB in HRs and also batting .311 while Schwarber was 2nd in HRs while bating .218. But 6 of the top 8 HRs hitters batted .271 or better with 3 of them topping .300.

45475D5B4D280 wrote: I'm thinking getting men on base is part of the idea driving the shift being banned. It's hard to say how many hits were lost by the short fielder being there to grab off a line drive or throw someone out at first on balls that make it through.






Fans can't tell by watching but no doubt teams keep track of this.

240203140212610 wrote: I'm thinking getting men on base is part of the idea driving the shift being banned. It's hard to say how many hits were lost by the short fielder being there to grab off a line drive or throw someone out at first on balls that make it through.






Fans can't tell by watching but no doubt teams keep track of this.
I believe that's precisely the reason. Fans like to see hits and runs. They don't enjoy seeing a line drive over the infield only to have the batter thrown out at 1B by an infielder in very short RF. Of course more hitting means longer games so I guess they'll have to come up with some new idea to shorten games.

Another change for next year is going to uniform scheduling - all teams playing all others without extra games in the team's division. If that is so, when do they do away with divisions? Right now, the Pirates have a theoretical chance to make the playoffs if they do well in their division. Without divisions, they would have to be in the top 12 teams in baseball to make the playoffs. Seems to favor the rich teams.

I'd like to see more regional divisions so fans could easily travel to road games, with a scheduled weighted toward more in-division games. I could see the Pirates in a division with the Phillies, Orioles, Nationals ...

5559505D4A164C5155574C50410A08785F55380 wrote: I'd like to see more regional divisions so fans could easily travel to road games, with a scheduled weighted toward more in-division games. I could see the Pirates in a division with the Phillies, Orioles, Nationals ...


Or with Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit.  Maybe that’s why MLB declared the Tigers to be the Pirates natural rival years ago.  They knew way back then that realigning the leagues was in the future in order to create those regional divisions.