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Pitching

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Wham with the Right Hand said:
I read that the Atlantic League, which is a minor league consisting of eight teams and 40% of players who have major league experience, will be experimenting by increasing the distance from the pitching rubber to home plate by 12" this year. Scientists have calculated that the extra foot will make a 93 mph fastball look like 91 mph.

This is in response to the increase in strikeouts which reduces action. In 2010 the major league K rate was 18.5%. So far in 2021 it's 24.4%. Over the course of a season this is about 10,500 additional strikeouts or about 4.3 per game. I can see what they're getting at after watching the Indians/White Sox series. It was mostly K's and HR's. Not much action. Heck, there was a no-hitter and a nine inning shutout. Most relievers are throwing in the high 90's.

All that work the pitchers have been doing with weighted baseballs and sticky substances and high speed photography and tunneling have given them the edge over hitters. The same thing happened in the late 60's (remember Denny McClain's 31 wins and Luis Tiant's 1.60 ERA in 1968?). So they lowered the mound to try and restore the balance. They also added a DH, at least in one league.

Now they're experimenting with changing the distance. I think it's going to happen. The game is getting difficult to watch and they're having trouble attracting young fans.

A survey by Street and Smith's Sports Business Journal pegged the average age of a national television MLB broadcast viewer at 57-years-old. By comparison, the average age of an NBA broadcast viewer on national television in the same survey was only 42-years-old.

I wonder what the average age on this forum is.
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By their reactions in game threads I'd say the average age is 7
 
jup said:
The key word here is WORK.

Pitchers and pitching innovators have been out there perfecting their craft while those guys with clubs ... not so much. Time for hitters to "step up to the plate" so to say. It isn't the American way to penalize those that build a better mousetrap. Leave the pitchers and the mound alone and put the honus where it belongs.
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I'm ok with leaving things the status quo if they allow the batters to juice again. Is sticky not considered cheating? The pitchers are being punished for cheating
 
I'd rather shrink home plate. Keep the mound/distance the same.
 
If pitchers are allowed to modify the ball before throwing it why aren't batters allowed to modify their bats?
 
avs2000 said:
Why don’t we just leave the game alone
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Because there are more strikeouts, more walks, more home runs, and less action than a few years ago. The length of games and the amount of downtime between pitches in increasing. The "game" is not a game to the owners; it's a business and one that is losing market share. They're looking for ways to put more action back in the game and speed things up.

So they put in the three-batter rule to eliminate managers bringing in three different pitchers in the same inning - each to get one batter. They're talking about a pitching clock. They're considering eliminating the shift to increase the base hits and base runners. And now they're experimenting with moving the mound back.

To respond to jup's statement that batters should put in the work that pitchers have done, I'm not sure what they can do. It's not like they don't already use pine tar and hollow out the ends of their bats. Maybe they could use high speed photography to image their swings and try to develop flatter swings that keep the bat in the hit zone longer? But they don't want level swings - they want uppercuts. Launch angle and all that.

I'd like to see the fences moved back in order to discourage hitters from trying to put everything in the air. Reward them for line drives and discourage them from trying for home runs. Get rid of all those uppercut swings that lead to tons of strikeouts. Eliminate guys who hit .240 with 40 home runs and replace them with smaller, faster guys with high OBP's and the ability to swipe bags.

This won't happen because a lot of parks are not set up so the fences can be moved. Like ours, for example, or Fenway. But they could take some juice out of the balls and accomplish the same thing.
 
Batters also wear a lot of protective gear these days. Those elbow guards they wear, no wonder they hang out over the plate and don't move away.

No guards above the knee except a cup and a helmet.
 
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Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but if you go moving fences back and reducing offensive excitement it will damage baseball, maybe permanently. The largest portion of fans do not want to go to the ballpark to watch a pitcher's duel. They just don't, and they are the largest portion of attendance. Trying to produce hitters that aren't "all or nothing" makes sense, but trying to reduce homeruns isn't a good move IMO.

The league needs to get the shift under control. It's ridiculous. There are positions in baseball and they should be manned. I can't stand to see a hitter line a ball over 2B to be caught by the SS standing in the OF. I don't want to hear "just hit the ball the other way" either because any pitcher worth a damn isn't going to pitch away from the shift. You want to eliminate guys hitting .240 then this would be a good start. That and get the sticky stuff being used by pitchers under control.
 
CDAV45 said:
Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but if you go moving fences back and reducing offensive excitement it will damage baseball, maybe permanently. The largest portion of fans do not want to go to the ballpark to watch a pitcher's duel. They just don't, and they are the largest portion of attendance. Trying to produce hitters that aren't "all or nothing" makes sense, but trying to reduce homeruns isn't a good move IMO.

The league needs to get the shift under control. It's ridiculous. There are positions in baseball and they should be manned. I can't stand to see a hitter line a ball over 2B to be caught by the SS standing in the OF. I don't want to hear "just hit the ball the other way" either because any pitcher worth a damn isn't going to pitch away from the shift. You want to eliminate guys hitting .240 then this would be a good start. That and get the sticky stuff being used by pitchers under control.
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Interesting perspective.

I played my whole life, as I assume many of us did, and I never thought of each position as having to be in a certain place.
 
I was usually at 1B or 3B, even though I was a slap hitting speedster. I just wish I didn't have the back injury I did, but that's life.

Thought since this is the pitching thread, I could mimic just about anyone pitching so that was a lot of fun to do to people. I was throwing about 80, before I hurt my back (I weighed only 140lbs then lol).
 
A simpler method than eliminating the shift would be to make the infielders actually play in the infield.

I'm not an advocate of this, or of any restrictions on defensive lineups.

The batters.. and organizations...have brought this on themselves by emphasizing power over bat control and bunting.

No shift could defeat guys like Carew, Rose, and Ichiro, none of whom hit the ball particularly hard, but used the entire field.
They might have batted .750 against a shift.

If batters want to beat today's pitchers, its gonna take brains over brawn.
 
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