The 2021 Baseball Season - Things to Come

awc713 · Sep 12, 2021

Lourdes 2-3, 2hrs, 3bbs, 5rs, and 7rbi, and Yuli 4-4 with an rbi and r…good day to be a Gurriel

Buck Turgidson · Sep 12, 2021

awc713 said: ↑

Lourdes 2-3, 2hrs, 3bbs, 5rs, and 7rbi, and Yuli 4-4 with an rbi and r…good day to be a Gurriel
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Father's Day in Houston

xcrunner51 · Sep 12, 2021

awc713 said: ↑

Lourdes 2-3, 2hrs, 3bbs, 5rs, and 7rbi, and Yuli 4-4 with an rbi and r…good day to be a Gurriel
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Yuli (and Brantley) still has a chance at the AL batting title.

phasors28 · Sep 12, 2021

lnchan · Sep 12, 2021

phasors28 said: ↑

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Yankee fans: he was tipping pitches. It is legal!

King1 · Sep 13, 2021

phasors28 said: ↑

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That's awesome. I liked Lindor anyways but like him even more now

Joe Joe · Sep 13, 2021

Starters have had 5 days rest before a start more often than only 4 days rest this season.

marks0223 · Sep 15, 2021

Slow down Chandler

BlindHog · Sep 16, 2021

leroy said: ↑

I haven't even put texx or tj on ignore because at least they're moderately entertaining. This doofus I did a while back.
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As I am new around here I have no idea what the D&D is, please explain. EDIT: Sorry leroy, I meant to reply to Buck. Still getting the hang of this.

sealclubber1016 · Sep 16, 2021

BlindHog said: ↑

As I am new around here I have no idea what the D&D is, please explain.
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Debate and Discussion

It's the subforum here where everybodies political bulls**t is supposed to stay. It's a cesspool that we try to keep quarantined. Some posters can't follow simple rules.

BlindHog · Sep 16, 2021

sealclubber1016 said: ↑

Debate and Discussion

It's the subforum here where everybodies political bulls**t is supposed to stay. It's a cesspool that we try to keep quarantined. Some posters can't follow simple rules.
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Thanks sealclubber
I think it is a good idea to have a place designated for that stuff. I am here to talk about baseball but I understand the desire to get into political issues. Especially those that overlap with baseball.

jim1961 · Sep 17, 2021

If the playoffs started today, the NYY wouldn't be there. What a pleasant thought.

J.R. · Sep 17, 2021

And here’s the first thing they’ve noticed, since this league began experimenting with a 15-second pitch clock in June:

2021 Average Game Time, Low-A West League*

Before pitch clock: 3:02
After pitch clock: 2:41

(*Formerly the California League)
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AVERAGE TIME PER 9 INNINGS, MLB
YEAR TIME/9 INNINGS
1981 2:33
1991 2:48
2001 2:58
2011 2:51
2021 3:09

Time is relative, remember? So relatively speaking, it’s hard not to get fixated on these two trends:

• In Major League Baseball, as that chart shows, the average time of a nine-inning game is up by nearly 20 minutes, just over the last 10 years — and by more than a half-hour since the ’80s.

• In the Low-A West League, though, the average game time is down by more than 20 minutes, just in the last three months, all since they flipped on their pitch clocks.
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But zippier game times aren’t the only reason this rule has people rethinking that whole Only Game without a Clock mantra. It’s turned out that playing games with better rhythm and almost no dead time has had an impact on much more than the time of the postgame fist-bump line. Since the arrival of the clock, this league has also seen:

• More runs
• More action
• More homers
• Fewer walks
• Fewer strikeouts
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The pitch clock is 15 seconds (17 seconds with runners on base), down from 20 seconds at the upper levels of the minors. Pitchers have 15 seconds to start their delivery. Otherwise, the umpire can call an automatic ball.

The batter is required to be in the batter’s box and “attentive” to the pitcher with eight seconds left on the clock. Otherwise, it’s an automatic strike.
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I watched a Sept. 7 game between the Stockton Ports and San Jose Giants. It started a little after 6:30 p.m. It was over at 8:47. You know how many nine-inning major-league games have been over in 2 hours and 13 minutes this year? That would be two — out of more than 2,000!

I could tell you in writing why that is, but it’s so much easier to show you through the magic of video. So I found a big-league game with a comparable first inning that also went down last week: Blue Jays at Orioles, Game 1 of their Saturday doubleheader.

Both the minor-league game and major-league game featured a scoreless top of the first inning and a two-run homer, for all the scoring, in the bottom of the first. Both games saw 24 pitches thrown in the inning. That’s where the similarities end.

Time of Low-A West League inning*: 8 minutes, 22 seconds
Time of Orioles-Blue Jays inning*: 13 minutes, 48 seconds
(*not including between-innings breaks)

So why would that big-league inning last nearly 5 ½ minutes longer than that minor-league inning? I had our high-tech guru, Eno Sarris, take a look. Then he produced this side-by-side video of the elapsed time between pitches in each of those games. See if you notice any difference (ho-ho-ho).

Vid

Two words: Dead time. With a 15-second pitch clock, every ounce of dead time was suctioned totally out of that minor-league game. Gone. And not missed. Like at all.
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What else pitch clocks change

More runs … higher batting averages … more homers … fewer strikeouts … fewer pitchers throwing ball four. All of that has happened since the pitch clocks began to tick. Here’s the data. See for yourself.

___________________RUNS/G | AVG | SLG | HR% | BB% | HBP%
WITHOUT CLOCK | 5.5 | 0.244 | 0.379 | 1.80% | 11.70% | 2.00%
WITH CLOCK | 6 | 0.269 | 0.429 | 2.40% | 10.00% | 1.80%

Maybe all those shifts toward more action were some kind of coincidence. We won’t know for sure until we see this clock in more leagues, in future seasons. But it’s safe to say it doesn’t seem like a coincidence to those who have paid attention. What’s harder to pinpoint is why the clock’s effect on the games has been this dramatic. Is it…

RHYTHM? Is it possible that it actually helps hitters to spend less time fidgeting with their batting gloves, marching around the dirt, messing with pitchers’ timing? Maybe it does.

Rico Brogna: “Hitting is rhythm. There is a physical part of hitting, an energy, transfer of weight, transfer of motion. And if you stop your energy, or divert it in a different direction, I always thought it prevents you from being as good as you can be as a hitter.”

LESS VELOCITY? The data doesn’t support the theory that pitchers delivering a pitch every 15 seconds lose velocity, because average fastball velocity without a clock (92.3 mph) and with it (92.4) is almost identical. But questions remain about that impact, despite the raw numbers.

Raul Ibañez: “I don’t think it did anything to the radar-gun fastball. But who knows if it did something to the pitch characteristics or the quality of the fastball.”

None of this is clear, at least not yet. But this is an area people throughout baseball remain highly curious about. And not just inside the Low-A West League.

One high-ranking AL executive: “A pitch clock would address a lot of concerns. There’s no one silver bullet. But having to throw more pitches more quickly would reduce velocity (because of less recovery time). What you’d expect to see is less break, less velocity, more contact and quicker pace. So it would address a lot of concerns.”
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Raul Ibañez: “This is the most exciting development that I’ve seen, as far as impacting the game, as far as having a positive impact on the game of baseball.”

So bear that in mind. But before we get too excited, we should remember …

Big-league players still hate the clock

Ah, yes. None of this can happen, in the complicated world we live in, without players signing off on it. And that’s how it should be. None of this should happen without players giving their thumbs-up.

But how likely are they to do that, as another stormy labor negotiation looms? You know the answer. Major-league players are, by far, the most wary group of all, when it comes to pitch clocks.
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Where do they go from here?

In baseball, it’s never simple to peer into the future and see it clearly. What lies ahead on the other side of the almost certain labor war to come? Not even the ghost of Marvin Miller could predict that. But here is what seems likely:

Barring some surprise agreement with the players on phasing in a clock, there would seem to be an excellent chance that by next season, every minor league is playing with a 15-second clock. MLB wouldn’t need union approval for that. And here’s why expanding this clock to all leagues seems obvious:

• Vastly increases the sample size so everyone can see if the impact on the game in the Low-A West League replicates itself on every level, in every way.

• Allows more players to experience life with a 15-second clock. Which gives big-league players more firsthand input, from fellow players, on the pros and cons.

Then, if the results are similar, it feels logical for MLB to approach the union to try to negotiate the arrival of this — or any sort of clock — in the big leagues in 2023, 2024 or pick a year that works. Players are a good bet to resist. We’ve seen this movie before. But here’s what people who have spent the summer living with this rule would like to see them try:

Keep an open mind — because amid the two gazillion rule experiments being tried out across the minor leagues, there might be more potential in this one, to pave a path for a better game, than all the others put together.
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J.R. · Sep 17, 2021

J.R. · Sep 18, 2021

DCkid · Sep 20, 2021

Hopefully, this is the right place to post non-Astros baseball topics.

Not sure if the Nats will ever be in contention again with Soto on the team, but my god is he a helluva player.

The Dark-Horse NL MVP Candidate Who Looks Like Ted Williams 2.0

Main takeaway from the article:

Through the morning of Sept. 17, there were 395 players with at least 150 plate appearances (slightly more than one per team game). Of those 395 players, 394 had more strikeouts than walks.

Then there's Soto, who could just about strike out in every plate appearance for the rest of the season and still have the best BB/K ratio in the majors. Through Friday morning, Soto had 120 walks against just 83 strikeouts for a ratio of 1.446. And, to reiterate, no other player can even boast a 1.0 ratio.
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marks0223 · Sep 21, 2021

Joe Joe · Sep 21, 2021

More things for Blue Jays to be pissed at from yesterday's game. Balls 4 and 5 to last out with bases loaded were called strikes.

Nick · Sep 21, 2021

marks0223 said: ↑

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I heard on twitter that its somehow the Astros fault…

Marshall Bryant · Sep 21, 2021

DCkid said: ↑

Hopefully, this is the right place to post non-Astros baseball topics.

Not sure if the Nats will ever be in contention again with Soto on the team, but my god is he a helluva player.

The Dark-Horse NL MVP Candidate Who Looks Like Ted Williams 2.0

Main takeaway from the article:
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I thought this was going to be about Kyle "Ted Williams" Tucker. That's been his handle since early minors.
There's been a seed change. Everybody was the next Willie Mays when I was growing up. Now everybody is the next Ted Williams.

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The 2021 Baseball Season - Things to Come

The 2021 Season will:

Be the usual 162 games

Be another shortened season (100-120 games played)

Be another shortened season (60-80 games played)

Be cancelled. No games played at all

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The 2021 Baseball Season - Things to Come

The 2021 Season will:

Be the usual 162 games

Be another shortened season (100-120 games played)

Be another shortened season (60-80 games played)

Be cancelled. No games played at all

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