• Changing RCF's index page, please click on "Forums" to access the forums.

2020-21 Offseason Discussion

Do Not Sell My Personal Information
He still has a minor league option remaining, but there's little logic in having both he and Amed Rosario on the 40 man roster by the end of camp. I would expect one of them to be dealt before Opening Day.

Something to keep an eye on and a big reason why people have been pressing them to play Rosario in the OF.

I don't think Luplow will be ready for the start of the season. Foot/ankle isn't responding as expected. Team needs a decent RH bat capable of playing in the OF.
 
Wouldn't be surprised if this was the end of the drum all together outside of maybe one more farewell game at the end of the season.
Well that and game 7 of the world series
 
Tough week. Joe Tait passes and now we lose John and his drum, hopefully not forever. And next year...we lose the name after 107 years. Which means if the Tribe doesn't go all the way this year I will die without seeing the Indians win a World Series. Thank you, Jose Mesa.

But on the bright side, we should get 162 games this year and maybe more. Last year we got screwed out of 102 games by the virus, games that will never be made up. These weren't rainouts.

DirecTV lowered the price of its Season Ticket package by 50 bucks to $130. That means out of state fans like me can watch the Indians for about $0.80 per game, less than ten cents an inning. That's the best entertainment value I can think of unless you like parking your car near the airport and watching planes take off and land.

I'll be interested to see how all the new rule change experiments in the minors work out. In the last five years a full 16 minutes have been added to the length of games and not one second of it was action. They're determined to reverse that.

I can't see a 15 second pitch clock. That's crazy. What would happen is pitchers would instruct catchers to hold the ball for a few seconds after each pitch before throwing it back to delay starting the clock- that's my guess.

However, some pitchers like to pitch with a rhythm and already use less than 15 seconds with nobody on base. A pitch clock would force every pitcher to do that. They would be trained to do it starting with their first year in the minors. It wouldn't be that big a deal. Throw the pitch, get back on the rubber, catch the ball, tap the rubber twice, tug your cap, get the sign, throw the pitch. Adam Cimber wouldn't be able to lean over and search for worms before getting the sign. That would be a good thing.

The craziest idea IMO is making pitchers step off the rubber before attempting a pickoff. That would slow down pickoff throws significantly, allowing runners to take bigger leads. Combine that with bigger bases, which reduces the distance between bases by six inches, and it will become dramatically easier to steal. I think the impact on the game will be huge. Players with speed will become more valuable. On-base percentage would be more important. Pitchers would be far more reluctant to walk batters knowing they would likely end up on second base, resulting in better pitches to hit and more offense. There would be a shift away from hitters who hit home runs but strike out a lot to high OBP guys with speed.

Maybe that's not such a crazy idea after all. Anything to get away from pitchers taking forever to throw a pitch and batters who pile up strikeouts, walks, and home runs. I don't know which rule changes will eventually get adopted in the majors but before long we're going to see a faster paced game with more baserunners and more action. And no Cleveland Indians.
 
Combine that with bigger bases, which reduces the distance between bases by six inches, and it will become dramatically easier to steal.

Heard this on a broadcast too. But to be technical, the distance is 4.5 inches closer. The 3 inches for 2nd is split between 3rd base side and 1st. With 90 ft basepath (1080 inches), 4.5 inches is 0.41% closer.
 
Heard this on a broadcast too. But to be technical, the distance is 4.5 inches closer. The 3 inches for 2nd is split between 3rd base side and 1st. With 90 ft basepath (1080 inches), 4.5 inches is 0.41% closer.

But if you would ask a Ricky henderson type of player who stole a lot of bases and told him he had 4+ inches closer (plus a wider bag), he would probably say he would have stole a fair amount of more bases in the end.
 
Heard this on a broadcast too. But to be technical, the distance is 4.5 inches closer. The 3 inches for 2nd is split between 3rd base side and 1st. With 90 ft basepath (1080 inches), 4.5 inches is 0.41% closer.
Actually it is not really .41% closer because the 90' is from edge of first (on the dugout side) to center of second. With standard 15" bases that gives you 1080" (90') less 1st base (15") less half of 2nd base (7-1/2") or 1057.5" edge to edge between 1st and 2nd. Subtracting 4.5" from that distance by increasing the bag size gives you 4.5/1057.5" or .425% closer. But who is counting a 100th of a percent. However, Ricky would have stolen a shit load more bases if he had 4.5" less inches to travel.

Even in todays game with instant replay, if a guy is out by 4.5" you can tell it with the naked eye, replay only confirms it if they even bother. So all the replays at second and many at 1st that we have seen over the last few years probably turn from outs to safe. And that is a significant number.

This may be the first really good idea that they have come up with to inject action into the game. Mostly because it will be invisible. Nothing will have seemed to have changed. And those are the best kind of changes. First rule change of Manfred's I think I could actually endorse.
 
If they do go to the larger bases I'll bet the number of steal attempts goes up by a lot more than 0.4%, which would equate to one more attempt per 235 attempts.

I'm sure teams can easily go back and review the replays of each stolen base attempt the previous season and determine how many of the outs would have been safe with an extra 4.5". It may not be that many. In 2019, for example, the Indians stole 103 bases and were caught 35 times. There might have been only five times where the runner was out by less than 4". That's about the length of a player's fingers, or if he slides feet first, one-third the length of his foot.

If the team concludes that the shorter basepath wouldn't have made a difference in 30 out of 35 cases, then they probably won't change their strategy at all.
 

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Video

Episode 3-13: "Backup Bash Brothers"

Rubber Rim Job Podcast Spotify

Episode 3:11: "Clipping Bucks."
Top