DrungoHazewood

Yes! You know how all the movies of Babe Ruth look like they're in fast motion? No, everyone just moved that fast. That's how they could finish a game in 90 minutes. It makes me nostalgic and I drift off.

You have to get the ball in play and move those runners along since everyone has a .900 fielding percentage and teams score three runs a game. Whoops, forgot it's not 1907.

If the three of them in the first sentence have a .340 combined OBP at the end of a somewhat normal season I'd eat my shoe. But it's nice they're doing well so far. I'd bat Sisco leadoff, at least against righties, whenever he plays. I guess I can bring up the thing that batting order doesn't really matter. The difference between Mullins leading off and Sisco is very small, as long as you're assuming they'll both be somewhere in the lineup anyway.

Back in the day, 10, 15, 20+ years ago, you'd call a guy with a .280-.315-.500 line a 5th or 6th place hitter on a good team. Solid, but lacking OBP skills. Today that's more like league average OBP. It's harder to have a sustainable offense when the entire core of the lineup fits that description. It would be really nice to have a couple guys at the top of the order with a .380 or .400 OBP so there's someone to drive in.

I don't see much difference. Both have some positives, but a lot of question marks. Certainly Shawaryn's last 100 or so innings aren't a positive, but I'd need some solid scouting to really know much of anything.

You know I'm just goofing on people who like to make sweeping judgments based on essentially nothing. This is the year of "the schedule is really short so those last four pitches are the same as 50 innings in a normal season!"

Understood. I'm going to need a lot more than a handful of innings in AAA and breaking into the majors to make lasting judgments. Others' mileage may vary.

Hey, isn't that Major League Baseball's Ryan Mountcastle? Why yes it is! "Hi, guys, Ryan Mountcastle here. If you click HERE I'll let you in on this one weird trick that'll take you from Jonathan Schoop's plate discipline to Mickey Mantle's in under six weeks! Guaranteed or your money back!" Effect not tested by the FDA to treat any illness or condition. For recreational purposes only. Not for use in California or Oregon. May cause excessive itching and swelling of the third toe of the left foot.

He's slugging .556. As those doubles become homers that'll be more like .600 or .700. He might have 100 intentional walks.

I was being sarcastic, but it's true that the early players and executives imagined baseball as a game between fielders and batters. Pitchers were very limited in their deliveries, underhanded like cricket of the day, stiff wrist/no snap, again like cricket. Batters could call for a high or low pitch. It didn't occur to them until 20 or more years in that the pitcher would intentionally not throw the ball where the batter could hit it, so they needed to invent balls and strikes. Of course from very early on their were pitchers who skirted the rules (notably Jim Creighton) and got extra speed and break on the ball. It's true that nobody from the early days would have imagined a game of mostly strikeouts, walks, and homers. "Scientific baseball" was a thing prior to Ruth, with the refined and intelligent ballplayer excelling in strategy and fielding and bunting and hitting-and-running. Lots of players, fans, and writers hated the changes of the 1920s, saying that any old brute could hit a ball 400', it took brains to win the deadball game. Those people clearly lost the argument.

I'm not sure what information you're looking at. Shawaryn has relieved in 35 games in his life, about half in the majors, so from what I'm looking at there's essentially nothing to go on that would lead one to conclude that he's the unusual case of a pitcher who is much better as a starter than a reliever. On average a pitcher is about a run a game better in relief.

Can you point to a rules change that you would be in favor of? The pitch clock is just helping to enforce a rule that has been on the books for a very long time but is almost never enforced. Bad things happen when the de facto rules are different from the rule book. For example, when you let the umps invent their own strike zone. Today we're allowing them to just ignore a rule they don't like, or find it inconvenient to enforce.

People love to say that baseball is the one game (or at least the one popular game in North America) that doesn't have a clock. Well, from the dawn of time until the 1930s and 40s it did. Because they tried to start as late as possible so people could get off work to go, but as Hallas said the sun goes down. So teams had to pick up the pace, and the umps constantly reminded them if they didn't. Every 4-5pm start had the potential to call the game because of darkness. Even if you watch games from the 1960s or 70s it's noticeably quicker than today. Pitchers got the ball, got a quick sign, and were throwing the next pitch. Jim Kaat (IIRC) was the pitcher who would say he pitched as fast as possible because his arm turned into a pumpkin at two hours, and he pitched 180 compete games. Ray Miller's Oriole staffs had a motto "work fast, throw strikes, change speeds." The first one was work fast! So I'd love for there to be a way to bring back that crisp, quick play. Then the runner-on-second rule wouldn't be necessary, you could play 14 innings in three hours. But until they figure out that puzzle, we're stuck with nine-inning games that sometimes approach four. It's kind of in jest, but I've sometimes suggested that there be a rule that the lights just go off at two and half or three hours, and the umpire would have a free hand to eject anyone who's dawdling, and they would strictly enforce the existing but exceptionally rarely enforced 20 second pitch rule..

That's the narrative baseball pushes. It's exactly the same as a hundred years ago when your great grandpa played the game. Well, okay, the rules are exactly the same but almost everything about the actual sport is completely different.

I watched Quick Pitch one morning in the last week or so and literally 60 or 70% of the "highlights" were a ball bouncing around the empty stands 440 feet from the plate. And another 10-20% was the last out of the game. Once every few games they'd show something that wasn't a homer or the last out.

My guess is that there will be some difference but it'll be so small that you'll never know if it was just random noise.

Even if you take out the intentionally trolling "pander" part there is some truth there. A lot of people don't like baseball because of the combination of lack of action, the long pauses, and the long games. The version of baseball that is most plagued by these things is also the big business version of baseball. Little League games don't take three and a half hours. The pro version does. Which is the part of baseball that is necessarily very concerned about growing the fanbase and the corresponding revenues. If MLB isn't at all concerned about why many people don't like baseball, they're doomed to a smaller and smaller, older and older core of fans. Primarily people who grew up watching baseball, who are now retired, and don't care so much if the game is over at midnight since they don't have to get up at 5am to go work anymore. What you're telling us is that you don't care if games last 17 innings and take forever, and that's what all real fans think, too. Sorry we don't.

It's fixing the problem that I rarely can watch the end of a nine-inning weekday game, and an extra inning game is not even on the table. I like baseball quite a lot, I've been watching the Orioles since an average game took about 2.5 hours and there was legitimate hope that Mom and Dad would let me stay up to the end. On Friday my son and I stayed up to the end of the game, it only went nine, but we were both asleep on the couch by the time it was over around 10:45. Can you imagine if the O's had tied it up and there was no runner on second rule? It would likely have been a standard-issue weeknight game that ended near midnight. Yes, one of many issues contributing to pace of play is the use of 45 relievers a game, half of them mid-inning substitutes, necessitating a commercial break. That's why they're implementing the 3-batter rule, which most folks who're against all rules changes also hate. 100 years ago you an average nine-inning game was under 2:00, and they played a 26-inning game in under 4:00. The 2020 Orioles have played two nine inning games that lasted less than 2:55, and even with the new rules they have three extra inning games over 3:50. I'm all for cutting out ads and charging more for each one. But the big thing is just plain old pace of play. Pitchers used to just get the ball and pitch, batters would step in and hit. If in 1920 you could play an average game in 1:55 the additional 1:15 today isn't baseball, it's messing around. Baseball needs to take proactive steps to fix their problems. I don't know that the runner on second thing is the best possible option, but I love that they've actually decided to try something, as opposed to their normal mode of operation of branding problems as features. "See... when the game takes 4:15 that just means that you got 2 1/2 hours more baseball for free! Next year we'll give you six hours a game and only increase ticket prices $5! Such a bargain!"

Other silly gimmicks I'd like to do away with: - Foul balls are strikes. I mean, seriously? If a batter has the ability to hit a tough pitch foul why should he be punished by the non-fans who can't stand long at bats? - The pitcher's mound. If a box drawn on the ground 50' from the plate was good enough for Harry Wright and Al Spalding (not to mention Jenny Finch and Eddie Feigner), it's good enough for John Means. Are they pitchers or mountain goats? - Lights. Oooohhh... I can play a game at midnight, look at me! You should be home with your family, not carousing all night at a ballgame. If you can't get off work to watch the game maybe you're not a real fan.

You know what's childish? Throwing overhand. Sure, any team can get the biggest kid on the playground and hurl the ball as fast as humanly possible and strike everyone out. But the founders made a game where the primary conflict was between batters and fielders. Not one where you sit around for four hours watching some behemoth throw gas to another behemoth who's trying to hit the ball 600 feet. We really need to get back to the roots, the foundation, of the sport and make any delivery above the waist illegal. I've had enough of gimmicks.

Really? I though the historical average was around 10%, maybe less than that. Isn't the number for 2019 213 extra inning games out of 2430 total? That's 8.7%. If you search for team games that last longer than nine innings you get two hits for every game (i.e. O's-Sox goes to extra you get one hit for O's, one for Sox.), so that could be the difference.

Lenn Sakata and Chris Davis had their moments of glory in extra innings, that I will remember forever. I have essentially zero recollection of the other 184 12+ inning games the Orioles have played in my lifetime*. In all extra inning games in my lifetime they're 369-303-1, which is pretty astounding. Especially since they're only been sporadically good since I was 14. * Ok, so I do have a vivid recollection of the one extra-inning tie they've played in my lifetime, since I was there. Supposed to be Cal's last game, 9/11 happened, was at old Yankee Stadium, rained pretty much the whole game, Cal went 0-for-7, Jeter went 0-for-5 (yeah!), and we had a five-plus hour drive home in the dark and the wet after they just decided 15 innings was enough.

Yes, that one!!

When basketball added the shot clock the first thing I thought of was how it was now the same as bouncing balls on a parachute in 3rd grade P.E.

Isn't that exactly the problem? When baseball had essentially no competition it was the most popular team sport. As football, basketball, hockey, soccer have gotten more exposure and have become legitimate alternatives more and more people choose the sports where the game is either over in two hours, is full of more action or they only play once a week. Baseball attendance has been in decline for a decade, and ratings have always been very localized. Nobody in Atlanta watches a Mariners-Twins game, not like Falcons fans would watch a Seahawks-Vikings game. So many, many people have taken your advice and moved on to something else that doesn't take four hours, with 90 minutes of pitching changes and figuring out the signs and adjusting your batting glove. And there's always the possibility the game will go 14 innings and last six and half hours. You might be happy with that, but owners and players who want expanded revenues and fans who'd like a nice 2-hour baseball game probably aren't.