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OT: The Toronto Blue Jays

manny said:
I also like that late 80s brand of baseball with lots of SB, more emphasis on speed, defence, putting the ball in play, 30% fewer GIDPs and 60% fewer Ks.

You won't get that back by eliminating the DH though. NL ball is bad right now too. They need more systematic changes.
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Yeah, don't get me wrong, if we could snap our fingers and get back to that, it would be awesome. But nothing in the current game is going to get back to that.

I mean, even pitchers batting just keeps going down and down. Back in the 70s and 80s, pitchers as a whole hit around .150, which is horrible, but at least it was positive wRC+. But especially since 2012-2013 or so, it's been even downhill from there. This yeah, as a whole, pitchers hit .108, and struck out 45% of the time they came to the plate. I used to be more of a purist and did enjoy parts of the non-DH game, but it's gotten so bad for pitchers now that there really is no sane and reasonable reason why anyone should want them to hit anymore. It's just gotten so bad to the point that's it's bordering on insanity. And since it's been so bad, in a couple years, the question won't be about going back to the way it was, but it will be about why we didn't do this years sooner.

But that's just a very minor point. Even since 2005, the league strikeout rate has gone from 16% to 22%. League batting average was around .270 before, it's been .245 the last couple years. They need to do something to get that average back up even a little bit.
 
Deckie007 said:
Nah, being close minded and resistant to progress what makes you wrong. Age is just a key ingredient to that.
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No, it's that you and I have different definitions as to what defines "progress", or at least we differ on the assumption that all change and all progress is necessarily good, which it isn't. Progress always comes with costs and not all of those costs are always worth it. You want the game to progress but in the end you still want it to be the same sport, not something completely unlike what it was. Baseball got started as a version of a British game called rounders. The two games are similar but you'll never mistake one for the other. I don't support the kind of "progress" in which the game of baseball as I grew up to know it, becomes a modern day rounders.
 
UWHabs said:
Yeah, don't get me wrong, if we could snap our fingers and get back to that, it would be awesome. But nothing in the current game is going to get back to that.

I mean, even pitchers batting just keeps going down and down. Back in the 70s and 80s, pitchers as a whole hit around .150, which is horrible, but at least it was positive wRC+. But especially since 2012-2013 or so, it's been even downhill from there. This yeah, as a whole, pitchers hit .108, and struck out 45% of the time they came to the plate. I used to be more of a purist and did enjoy parts of the non-DH game, but it's gotten so bad for pitchers now that there really is no sane and reasonable reason why anyone should want them to hit anymore. It's just gotten so bad to the point that's it's bordering on insanity. And since it's been so bad, in a couple years, the question won't be about going back to the way it was, but it will be about why we didn't do this years sooner.

But that's just a very minor point. Even since 2005, the league strikeout rate has gone from 16% to 22%. League batting average was around .270 before, it's been .245 the last couple years. They need to do something to get that average back up even a little bit.
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This is because the NL is the only baseball league, major or minor, that still allows pitchers to hit. So pitchers today never even pick up a bat until they turn pro with an NL team. They're learning to hit basically from scratch in their early 20's. But there is no law that says a pitcher has to be a lousy hitter. It just requires time and effort to be put into it. Look at the kid in Anaheim. He's an elite pitcher and he can hit for power. But playing in the AL he can only do one or the other in any game he plays. If he were playing a few miles away for the Dodgers, he could be the starting pitcher and the clean-up hitter. And if he was struggling on the mound you could double switch him to first base and keep his bat in the lineup.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
This is because the NL is the only baseball league, major or minor, that still allows pitchers to hit. So pitchers today never even pick up a bat until they turn pro with an NL team. They're learning to hit basically from scratch in their early 20's. But there is no law that says a pitcher has to be a lousy hitter. It just requires time and effort to be put into it. Look at the kid in Anaheim. He's an elite pitcher and he can hit for power. But playing in the AL he can only do one or the other in any game he plays. If he were playing a few miles away for the Dodgers, he could be the starting pitcher and the clean-up hitter. And if he was struggling on the mound you could double switch him to first base and keep his bat in the lineup.
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This is just inaccurate. Pitchers in NL teams' minor league systems hit. Most US college leagues let pitchers hit as well (and quite a few P prospects are two-way players in college, most of them in high school.)

Also Ohtani is a unicorn. But anyway, to your point, Ohtani hits second on days when he pitches (the Angels just don't DH for him) and he hits second when he DHs. And they did this double switch you're talking about 4 times this year -- Ohtani started on the mound and then went to RF when he got replaced by a RP.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
This is because the NL is the only baseball league, major or minor, that still allows pitchers to hit. So pitchers today never even pick up a bat until they turn pro with an NL team. They're learning to hit basically from scratch in their early 20's. But there is no law that says a pitcher has to be a lousy hitter. It just requires time and effort to be put into it. Look at the kid in Anaheim. He's an elite pitcher and he can hit for power. But playing in the AL he can only do one or the other in any game he plays. If he were playing a few miles away for the Dodgers, he could be the starting pitcher and the clean-up hitter. And if he was struggling on the mound you could double switch him to first base and keep his bat in the lineup.
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Yeah, that's pretty much the biggest reason why pitcher hitting continues to go down the toilet. Plus the increased specialization, most teams realize that there's really no point to wasting time on pitcher batting to maybe get an extra hit here or there when they should be 100% focused on pitching.

And in any event, Ohtani is a special case, but if anything, he almost proves that you can't both hit and pitch. Up until this year, they basically never let him bat on the days he pitched. And even this year, as a pitcher he had a .787 OPS, the rest of the time he was in the 1.000 range. I mean, sure, as a pitcher .787 is God tier, and it's a small sample size of like 65PA, but it goes to show you that even one of the best hitters into the game turns into basically an average bat when he pitches. And more often that not, even when he was removed as a pitcher, they didn't keep him in the lineup. I'd be willing to bet if he keeps hitting .200 points of OPS worse when he pitches, they'll stop doing that and just use a traditional DH, and use those as games to rest him as a batter.
 
WeHaveMoreCupsThanYou said:
This is because the NL is the only baseball league, major or minor, that still allows pitchers to hit. So pitchers today never even pick up a bat until they turn pro with an NL team. They're learning to hit basically from scratch in their early 20's. But there is no law that says a pitcher has to be a lousy hitter. It just requires time and effort to be put into it. Look at the kid in Anaheim. He's an elite pitcher and he can hit for power. But playing in the AL he can only do one or the other in any game he plays. If he were playing a few miles away for the Dodgers, he could be the starting pitcher and the clean-up hitter. And if he was struggling on the mound you could double switch him to first base and keep his bat in the lineup.
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it seems like you just object to team's pursuing strategies that are objectively more successful than the ones you prefer as a fan/baseball historian.

I guess we agree that there is a problem.

We do not agree on the solution though.
 
What type of nonsense is this that pitchers inability to hit today are because they don’t hit in the minors?

Who is the point of reference… babe Ruth? We can look at basically all of baseballs history to see if pitchers could hit and they basically never could.

because throwing a ball 95 mph with pinpoint accuracy has exactly zero in common with being able to hit one.
 
Wayward DP said:
it seems like you just object to team's pursuing strategies that are objectively more successful than the ones you prefer as a fan/baseball historian.

I guess we agree that there is a problem.

We do not agree on the solution though.
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style over substance
 
We should really be teaching NHL goal-scorers like Matthews and Ovechkin how to stop pucks as well as shoot them.

Just ridiculous that these over-specialized weenies don’t put in any time playing goal over the course of the season.

Same goes for Carey Price. Can you believe this guy’s never played a single NHL shift at forward or defense?
 
manny said:
Kind of funny that the year Shapiro and Atkins finally trade major prospects, AA makes extremely low cost improvements at the deadline and wins the Word Series. Meanwhile the Jays finish fourth in the division, again.

It's a very uneven playing field though. They really need to consider re-alignment.
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They’re attempt at low cost improvements aka patch work with the pitching staff at the beginning of the year is what cost them. The adds at the deadline actually gave them a chance. Berrios was very good
 
mbow30 said:
What type of nonsense is this that pitchers inability to hit today are because they don’t hit in the minors?

Who is the point of reference… babe Ruth? We can look at basically all of baseballs history to see if pitchers could hit and they basically never could.

because throwing a ball 95 mph with pinpoint accuracy has exactly zero in common with being able to hit one.
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not to mention the change in pitchers and pitching itself, in terms of velocity, spin rate, etc.

don't think you had bullpens routinely touching the high 90s back in the 60s.
 
Wayward DP said:
it seems like you just object to team's pursuing strategies that are objectively more successful than the ones you prefer as a fan/baseball historian.
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This is the crux of his issue. He likes hit and runs because they're exciting. But we've learned over the years that they're bad baseball and teams who employ them regularly will score fewer runs than teams who don't. "Making Contact" is similarly exciting because it's not someone swinging for the fences and missing more often but we've also learned that pull contact of a specific angle and exit velocity is worth far, far more than any other specific type of contact a hitter can make. Hitters who make pull contact with good exit velocity and angle are simply more valuable hitters than other types of hitters and therefore most hitters try to emulate that, and those who can't get replaced by those who can.

His issue is with the nature of the sport:

- Running is a net negative if you're not successful at about 75%, it hurts your team
- Bunting in most situations is a net negative
- Bullpen pitchers are better than almost all starting pitchers on the 3rd trip through the lineup
- Pull contact is easily, easily the most valuable type of contact

Welcome to the modern game, where this has all been figured out and adapted to. You would have to make rule changes that made optimal strategies less valuable to combat this.
 
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