You've been watching baseball for a long time. What if all of sudden from one season to the next in the 1970s or 1980s pitchers started taking 20 - 30+ seconds between pitches and games started to last 3.5 to 4 hours. Would you have been upset and wanted them to get back to the traditional, quicker paced play of baseball?
Exactly. This does remind me of when the NBA went to the absolutely no hand-check, call all ticky-tack fouls on the perimeter, and they forced the players to adjust. This was after the 90's and early 2000's physicality had the scoring at all time lows and was just a really hard product to watch (even though the 90's Rockets championships helped foster this slower style of play). The rule enforcements opened the game up, pace went up, scoring went up, defense-only skill sets started to get less valued and embraced the more well-rounded/verstaile players with extreme atlehticism and quickness (and helped foster in the era of big men who could do more than just back it in/post-up). Some say it brought the game back to how it was being played in the 80's when the league's popularity rose astronomically compared to all other decades/eras. Baseball games shouldn't be 3.5-4 hours. Granted, there are more pitching changes now but with the 3 batter rule, shouldn't be too many within the inning. Players will adjust... and the game will be back to a "normal" length.
One thing I'll add, offense only really got ugly in the NBA when they got rid of the illegal defense rules after Jordan retired, that era didn't cover the rocket's titles, just 98-05.
It was pretty ugly in the 94 finals. Was also ugly during Jordan's second 3 peat. Some of those Jazz-Bulls games barely cracked 80-90 points.
Interesting graphic I saw today with all the recent extensions and talk of us possibly extending guys. The fall off as a star position player in your mid 30's is even more precipitous than I thought. And the peak fall off is also quite a bit younger than one would think.
Love this for hitters, not pitchers. WAR just isn't a good metric for pitchers. fWAR is slightly better than bWAR but still not good. For example the Astros have only had 3 pitchers have 4 bWAR since 2013. Keuchel in 2014 and 2015 Verlander in 2018, 2019, and 2022 Cole in 2018 and 2019. Framber's 2022 was good enough for 3.7 bWAR. that should tell you all you need to know about using that for pitchers. Even fWAR of 4.4 when he was 5th in CY voting tells you its bad
Who should have gotten more than 4 WAR than those guys? I'd say RA9-WAR a lot of times feels more right, but it gives the pitcher a lot of credit for what could be luck. I'd say RA9-WAR may be more accurate for Javier and Urquidy than fWAR (and Valdez, but to a lesser degree). I don't have much issue with fWAR for hitters and the vast majority of pitchers (i.e., basically anyone that isn't a LA darling controlling contact). Rank Year Name RA9-WAR fWAR 1 2019 Justin Verlander 9.0 6.4 2 2019 Gerrit Cole 8.0 7.5 3 2018 Justin Verlander 7.4 6.6 4 2015 Dallas Keuchel 7.3 5.7 5 2022 Justin Verlander 7.0 6.1 6 2018 Gerrit Cole 5.6 5.9 7 2022 Framber Valdez 5.3 4.4 8 2021 Lance McCullers Jr. 4.8 3.2 9 2022 Cristian Javier 4.7 3.4 10 2014 Dallas Keuchel 4.4 3.5 11 2017 Dallas Keuchel 4.2 2.3
War works the same for all pitchers so for the sake of this discussion it is perfectly valid. The drop off after 30 is obvious under any metric.
I wonder what time frame this graphic took into account. Before the DH included? I also wonder with advanced training techniques, video training and AI if this graph might shift to a older age before the drop off.
Before noticing the dates on the graphic, I was going to say "That graphic looks post PED Era". The dates on the graphic state 2013-2022.
I looked at all Astros hitters with 15+ bWAR (career team stats only) that ends up being 23 hitters. If a player was traded during the season (Berkman, Pence, Watson, Doran, Hidalgo, L.Gonzalez) I did not count that season. AGE - # (avg bWAR) 19 - 2 (0.95) 20 - 4 (1.93) 21 - 7 (3.60) 22 -12 (2.15) 23 - 17 (2.79) 24 - 21 (2.65) 25 - 21 (4.09) 26 - 22 (3.81) 27 - 21 (3.83) 28 - 19 (3.47) 29 - 18 (3.23) 30 - 14 (2.84) 31 - 10 (4.04) 32 - 7 (4.53) 33 - 5 (3.12) 34 - 4 (1.70) 35 - 4 (3.25) 36 - 4 (2.40) 37 - 4 (1.88) 38 - 2 (1.95) 39 - 2 (1.60) 40 - 1 (0.40) 41 - 1 (-2.10) Also I did not make any adjustments for shortened seasons like 1981, 1994, 1995, or 2020.
Would be interesting to see the average salary for those. I think the decrease in innings being thrown has thrown off what it means to be a top starting pitcher by WAR.
Defintely agree with this. Starting pitching WAR is down. Relief pitching WAR is up. Number of pitchers reaching 162 innings is about half of what it was 30 years ago. Granted, pitchers threw at quicker pace 30 years ago, had to last longer into games, and didn't throw max effort all the time as the game was about more than just K's, BB's, and HR's. How many years are we away from no one qualifying for the ERA title?
Will also be interesting to see how speeding up the game changes how deep pitchers go in games. Is it easier or harder to throw 100 pitches over 1.5 hours vs 2.5 hours? On one hand, the arm gets extra rest with the longer games. On the other, it may get cold and may be harder to stay loose.
My guess is that the results will be all over the place and be a pitcher-to-pitcher issue. I think some max effort guys may not last as long into games. Others, I think it may take a small bit off their velo, but give them increased endurance. The only big thing I'm "worried" (not sure if that is the right word...as I don't think this change would necessarily be Chicken Little territory) for the pitch clocks is that some of the less endurant starters may see a small drop in velo as the season goes on (or needing a fatigue IL trip) instead of picking up velocity.
Loophole shift. They shifted the outfielders instead of infielders. It would be a guaranteed double if you could hit to the opposite field.
I believe many predicted here this would clearly happen. If they're not willing to bunt or try and hit ground balls the opposite way, they're certainly not going to be able to accomplish a fly ball (unless they totally mis-hit it). Now Tucker will likely not get the same treatment. We've seen him go the opposite way with intention.
When they are making a possible single easier for you its somewhat understandable to stick to your game. If they are giving you a good chance at 2 or 3 bases (maybe all 4) and you can't do it then you just aren't a competent hitter.
